4.16.10 - 8:00AM
- by
Mike Singer

Convert Your Favorite Photos Into ASCII Art

At the world wide web's infancy of the early 90s, long before Web 2.0, during Web 1/3, people couldn't use Google Images or Flickr to amass photographic collections of Right Said Fred or "huge beards." Even today, with our technological developments of database management, searching for "huge beard" is considered NSFW (not because the pictures are inappropriate, but because some bosses don't approve of such use of time.)

A new project, Command-Line Flickr, from Parisian grad student Raphaël Velt pays tribute to the historical interfaces of document sharing -- like BBS -- by converting Flickr images into ASCII art via a Telnet-like command line. That's one example above, next to its photographic equivalent (I won't reveal which tags I searched). Velt says he "decided to combine the web 2.0 essence of Flickr with the aesthetics and interactivity of command-line interfaces. One of the ideas behind this project is to remind internet users that images could be shared through such interfaces long before the technologies behind Flickr existed." Also, photographs that might seem unfit for the workplace are much less so when constructed out of text.
(oYo) <-- example.

Check out a few more of ASCII-fied photos after the break.

"standing cat"

KFC double down sandwich "double down sandwich"

"justin bieber"

"ghost baby"