ASCII porn
Encyclopedia
The term ASCII porn
, or "ASCII pr0n", describes pornographic images consisting of ASCII art
. It was the world's first internet pornography
, and was popular (among the then few computer users) before the invention of the World-Wide Web, and often found on BBS
es and other text mode
terminal
-based systems that could be reached via direct modem
dial-up. It was also exchanged via Fidonet
and sneakernet
and on the early Internet
using pre-WWW services such as email
, telnet
, usenet
and gopher.
A contributing factor to the relative popularity of ASCII porn was high compatibility: the standard ASCII
character set could be displayed on most computer monitors and printed on most printers. Also, ASCII porn could be composed by hand using nothing more than a text editor
, without the need for a model or camera. With the advent of the World-Wide Web, ASCII porn largely slipped into obscurity.
Net artists
in the 1990s returned to the form, for instance in the work Deep ASCII, a rendering of the movie Deep Throat
, created by Vuk Ćosić
of the ASCII Art Ensemble. Concrete poet
Florian Cramer also produced ASCII work based on sexually explicit images.
PORN
Porn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
, or "ASCII pr0n", describes pornographic images consisting of ASCII art
ASCII art
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...
. It was the world's first internet pornography
Internet pornography
Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups...
, and was popular (among the then few computer users) before the invention of the World-Wide Web, and often found on BBS
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
es and other text mode
Text mode
Text mode is a kind of computer display mode in which the content of the screen is internally represented in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of character cells, each of which contains one of the characters of a...
terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
-based systems that could be reached via direct modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
dial-up. It was also exchanged via Fidonet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
and sneakernet
Sneakernet
Sneakernet is an informal term describing the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically couriering removable media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives, or external hard drives from one computer to another. This is usually in lieu...
and on the early Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
using pre-WWW services such as email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
, usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and gopher.
A contributing factor to the relative popularity of ASCII porn was high compatibility: the standard ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
character set could be displayed on most computer monitors and printed on most printers. Also, ASCII porn could be composed by hand using nothing more than a text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
, without the need for a model or camera. With the advent of the World-Wide Web, ASCII porn largely slipped into obscurity.
Net artists
Internet art
Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...
in the 1990s returned to the form, for instance in the work Deep ASCII, a rendering of the movie Deep Throat
Deep Throat (film)
Deep Throat is a 1972 American pornographic film written and directed by Gerard Damiano and produced by Louis Peraino and starring Linda Lovelace ....
, created by Vuk Ćosić
Vuk Cosic
Vuk Ćosić , graduated from Univerzitet u BeograduThe university of Belgrade and earned a BA in Archaeology in 1991, emigrating that year to Trieste, Italy, and the following year to the newly independent Slovenia....
of the ASCII Art Ensemble. Concrete poet
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
Florian Cramer also produced ASCII work based on sexually explicit images.
External links
- asciipr0n.com - a website featuring a large ASCII porn archive
- The textfiles.comTextfiles.comtextfiles.com is a web site run by Jason Scott dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the BBS world and various subcultures. The site categorises and stores thousands of ASCII files. It focuses on text files from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and...
ASCII art archive also contains a significant amount of ASCII porn (including a mirror of asciipr0n.com). - asciiporn.us - a blogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
-style website dedicated to ASCII porn