Aces of ANSI Art was the first group of artists specifically organized for the purposes of creating and distributing ANSI art

ANSI art

ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments...

. The group was founded and operated by two BBS enthusiasts from California, "Zyphril" and "Chips Ahoy", from 1989 through 1991.

History

The group was initially formed in 1989 during the height of the 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...

 era, but soon after the group's founding, ANSI art groups took on a life of their own, growing increasingly popular and spawning what would come to be known as the "artscene." ANSI art, which initially began as a method for bulletin board sysops to draw users to their boards, but with the emergence of organized groups, the artscene became associated with "underground" culture, such as warez

Warez

Warez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...

 boards.

In 1990, a schism occurred when a small but influential group of members left the group to form ACiD Productions

ACiD Productions

ACiD Productions is a digital art group. Founded in 1990, the group originally specialized in ANSI artwork for BBSes. More recently, they have extended their reach into other graphical media and computer software development...

. ACiD (ANSI Creators In Demand) will grow to become the first international artscene group.

Membership

• Chips Ahoy (Founder)
• Zyphril (Founder)

• RaD Man
  RaD Man
  Christian Wirth , better known by the pseudonym RaD Man, is an American computer artist and historian. He works in the field of ANSI art, a method of creating art using a limited set of text characters and color escape codes based loosely on the relevant ANSI standard .RaD Man was initially...
  
   (Senior Member)
• Mondoman

• The Beholder
• Icepirate

See also

• ANSI art
  ANSI art
  ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments...
  
  
• 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...
  
  
• Demoscene
  Demoscene
  The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
  
  

• Digital art
  Digital art
  Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
  
  

List of artscene groups

• Pixel art
  Pixel art
  Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
  
  

• Software art
  Software art
  Software art refers to works of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software art has attained growing attention since the...
  
  
• Tradigital art
  Tradigital art
  Tradigital art most commonly refers to art that combines both traditional and computer-based techniques to implicate an image. It is related to digital art, traditional art, information art, new media art, video art, interactive art, and internet art.-Background:Artist and teacher Judith Moncrieff...
  
  

Further reading

• Danet, Brenda. "Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online". Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-85973-424-3.
• "Dark Domain: the artpacks.acid.org collection" (DVD-ROM). San Jose, CA, USA: ACiD Productions, LLC, 2004. ISBN 0-9746537-0-5.
• Hacker Chronicles, CD-Rom, produced and distributed by P-80 Systems.
• Scott, Jason. "BBS: The Documentary
  BBS: The Documentary
  BBS: The Documentary is a 3-disc, 8-episode documentary about the subculture born from the creation of the bulletin board system filmed by computer historian Jason Scott Sadofsky of textfiles.com....
  
  " (DVD). Boston, MA, USA: Bovine Ignition Systems, 2005.
• Wands, Bruce (2006). Art of the Digital Age, London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-23817-0.
• Zetter, Kim
  Kim Zetter
  Kim Zetter is an American freelance journalist in Oakland, California. She has written on a wide variety of subjects from the Kabbalah to dining out in San Francisco to Israel to cryptography and electronic voting, and her work has been published in newspapers and magazines all over the world,...
  
  . "How Humble BBS Begat Wired World". Wired News
  Wired News
  Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
  
  . June 8, 2005. Retrieved October 27, 2005.

Examples of ANSI Artwork

• Aces of ANSI Art Classics, a YouTube video featuring Animations from 1991 by Members of the AAA
• artscene.textfiles.com, The artscene branch of the textfiles.com
  Textfiles.com
  textfiles.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...
  
   library.
• darkdomain.org, Dark Domain (2004). An archive on DVD which hosts a complete collection of underground artscene works between 1987-2003.
• Roy/SAC Text Artist- Superior Art Creations, Information about ASCII Art Styles, SAC Art Packs Download
• Sixteen Colors ANSI Art and ASCII Art Archive - A web viewable archive of current and past ANSI and ASCII packs
  Artpack
  An artpack is an archive of computer artwork which is distributed in a compressed format such as ZIP or RAR.While most artpacks today contain either ANSI and ASCII art or hirez VGA, they may also include a combination of RIPscrip art, tracked or otherwise digital music, poetry and editorials, 3D...
  
   released by the computer art scene
  Computer art scene
  The phrase computer art scene, or artscene for short, refers to a community of individuals and groups that are both interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.-Early computer art:...
  
  

More on the History of the Art Scene

• BBS: The Documentary Episode 5 documents the rise of the Art Scene

Releases

• Aces of ANSI Art Remembrance Pack - An archive of ANSI artwork created by various members of the group between 1989-1991.