Breaking imagery down to unicode: these artworks combine the historical with ASCII

The Argentina-based digital artist Enigmatriz works with abstractions, colour manipulation, pixellation and saturation. But perhaps the most unique element of his recent works is the use of ASCII. ASCII art is traditionally known as digital, text-based art that creates images using the 95 printable characters defined by the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, usually seen on forums or copypastas. More than just emoticons or kaomojis, ASCII art usually takes the form of extremely detailed images made up of thousands of nifty shapes all available on the average keyboard. Enigmatriz goes even further, combining it with original source images to create something that sits at the border between digital and ethereal.

Using the Image to ASCII tool available online, Enigmatriz found a new way to play with digital assets. “Everyday, I sit on my computer and browse through hundreds of images in the public domain to find things that catch my attention and feel are worth shining a new light on them,” says Enigmatriz. “When working with ASCII, what I like and find particularly interesting is the blend between hundred old paintings, photographs etc. and modern technologies.” Enigmatriz creates unique contrasts between images – historical paintings are overlaid with spatterings of text, ASCII renders are layered on top of playing cards or archival imagery. The results are simply good to look at – sometimes magical. The images prompt the viewer to break down imagery into simpler shapes, recognisable unicode and characters that lie underneath all art like a DNA. Enigmatriz’s digital art works are a bit like a biology class, revealing the skeletal forms of art and offering something new to learn about them.