Bulletin board systems, or BBSs, represent an early form of online community for home computer owners. Using demographic data from public and private sources, the article attempts to estimate the population of this dynamic, decentralized network from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.
This contribution focuses on the hacker cultures in the FRG and GDR in the 1980s. It calls for more comparative studies and shows that the narrative of technical backwardness of the Eastern Bloc does not cover the whole history of its computerization of the private sphere.
Pediophobia is the fear or worry of dolls. In this paper, I examine contemporary adults’ disliking of character toys – dolls, action figures or soft toys – and investigate the reasons for the demonization, distaste and a possible fear for toys of the present.
This article is a study of cosmopolitan imagery present in movies and videos used to promote Macao as a tourist destination and place to experience the world in miniature.
The essay analyses narrative constructions of (threatening) floating populations of migrant labourers and the (threatened) urban landscape of New Delhi, India.
The author accompanied a poet and street vendor on the streets of Berlin over a two-week period. The text collage discusses the phenomenon of ’loitering’ in urban public spaces in two parallel discourses.
This overview analyzes the elements regarding the fear of death in a German silent film, Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922).
The duality of the notion of absurd as philosophical category and as aesthetical genre in this work is explored on the example of Fargo series (2014–): a black comedy–crime drama based on the Academy Award-winning film of the same name (1996).
The purpose of this text is to give a brief overview of ASCII, ANSI, PETSCII, Shift-JIS and Unicode art and how these concepts have been shaped by technology, culture and aesthetics, to discuss alternative categories for text graphics that can be relevant also in the future, when these character encodings have possibly been made obsolete.
In what follows I am going to introduce and meditate upon three of the text related artworks—one a digital image, one a video and one a series of themed paintings—which I have been making over the past few years.
This article traces the evolution of moving text as a stylistic element of “crack intros” and “computer demos” between 1984 and 1992, from a simple line moving from right to left at the bottom of the screen to massive 3D letters free-floating in space.
Keys of Fury is brutalist storytelling about technology and keystrokes, and an artistic statement based on the concept, research and practice of KYBDslöjd, which I define as “drawing and crafting by type in”.
It is relatively seldom that the contemporary computer user comes across text mode graphics. In recent years, though, the aesthetic of text mode art has experienced a rebirth: one can buy ASCII logos printed on t-shirts, ANSI art gets featured on album covers, and some of the most proficient artists from the 1990s are making impressive comebacks.