Why ASCII Art?

For the aesthetics of this piece, I've been working with a strong visual direction towards light touches of design, default browser elements, and ascii-art illustrations. ASCII art is not uncommon in the world of clicker games. Most notably, Candy Box 2 deploys the illustration style fantastically. When experiencing the game play of these games, I was impressed by how this super simple illustration style was able to effectively world build. It also creates a comfort with really basic interactions, and preps the user to engage with the text content on equal terms with the visual content.

As I continued to work on the game, I immediately saw some lovely additional opportunities that arose from these visuals. Part of what I'm trying to get users to engage with is the ease with which visuals can be digitally manipulated. When an audience sees ascii-art, it's easy to invite them into the idea of image manipulation. I can get them on board with manipulation and make them feel like they see and understand how the magic is happening. This gives me an opportunity to pull them into an experience and create a moment of surprise when they become confronted with images that are not as straight-forward for them to understand.

In additional research and conversations, Pierre Depaz recommended that I read In Defense of the Poor Image by Hito Steyerl. This was a great essay in support of what Steyerl calls "poor images." This piece brought to light a lot of ideas that further support a strategy of using ascii-art for these illustrations. Here are some of those ideas, with elaborations on applicability towards this project:

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1. The trade-off between quality and accessibility. There is something lovingly accessible about ascii-art. In terms of portability, text is one of the easiest, most light-weight forms of data. Rather than relying on a high quality image, you are forced to strategically emphasize and simplify the visual message, to say the most while using the least. A de-emphasis on quality tucks in neatly with the quality of the imagery that I have observed on these flags. As a set of images, they are not at all about a beautiful rendering of an idea, but rather the speed with which a quantity of ideas can be grabbed and implemented.
2. “Being out of focus lowers one’s value as an image.” The material that I am working with is not about high-end design. All of the people involved with the creation of the original image were more or less amateurs. A woman learning photography, another woman as an untrained model. The original work is earnest in its presentation. However, once the work was manipulated at scale, that earnestness was lost. The value of the image and its subjects were lowered with each additional rendering. This was a literal devaluing, in terms of the image quality and the effort in the designs and mockups, and a figurative devaluing as the original photographer was not attributed and the model's personal values were inverted without consent. By utilizing ascii-art, I can lower the value of these works even further, and in fact have abstracted and devalued them to the point where they are no longer the original thing. During the course of the game, I can play with pushing the ascii art to be more or less photographic and representational. This gives me access to a scaleable metaphoric tool.
3. Heavily-compressed and can travel quickly. Ease of portability is a primary factor in what I discovered about this image. Somehow this image was able to easily travel and be manipulated at scale. Why not push that limit even further? Rather than rendering out these travelling color values as an image, display them for the letters, numbers, and code that they truly are. Ceci n'est pas une photo.
4. Prioritizing impression over immersion. The strength and value of a "poor image" is that it willingly and proudly ignores the idea of an immersive representation of the real world. The imagery does not ask you to suspend your disbelief. With this quality, I think if I can make the magic trick of immersion happen regardless, the payoff for the audience will be all the more impactful. The audience's imagination and interaction will be what makes this world real.
5. “The poor image is no longer about the real thing — the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real condition of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short, it is about reality.” I just love this so much.

Why a Clicker Game?

I additionally wanted to clarify for myself why I am drawn to a clicker game with exponential growth. There is a really natural and obvious metaphor here about consumption and exponential growth, ideas which were perfectly articulated in Universal Paperclips. The sheer magnitude of images that I've been working with have had some interesting effects on the images themselves. The "need" to produce this quantity and range of flags has pushed the content of these flags to the ridiculous, to opposing sides of issues, to the infringement of a person's image, and to the appropriation of other people's artwork.

Additionally, the button click interaction which effectively "moves things around" helps me speak back to point of origin for this work, which is Amazon. When shopping on Amazon, we click buttons and "add to cart." With this button click, we experience an object moving from one place to another, even though all that really happened was some numbers changed. This digital movement eventually leads to physical change and movement in the real world (most of it hidden from the consumer.) I think there is something about this idea of the same motion leading to consumption, production, and destruction. While I might ask a user to be doing any number of those tasks, the reality is they will still just be clicking.

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Additional quotes

From Hito Steyerl's In Defense of the Poor Image:

"The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction. The image is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance. The poor image tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea in its very becoming."

"Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultification."

"The contemporary hierarchy of images, however, is not only based on sharpness, but also and primarily on resolution....Obviously, a high-resolution image looks more brilliant and impressive, more mimetic and magic, more scary and seductive than a poor one. It is more rich, so to speak."

"But the economy of poor images is about more than just downloads: you can keep the files, watch them again, even reedit or improve them if you think it necessary. And the results circulate."

"Like the economy of poor images, imperfect cinema diminishes the distinctions between author and audience and merges life and art. Most of all, its visuality is resolutely compromised: blurred, amateurish, and full of artifacts."

"On the one hand, the economy of poor images, with its immediate possibility of worldwide distribution and its ethics of remix and appropriation, enables the participation of a much larger group of producers than ever before. But this does not mean that these opportunities are only used for progressive ends. Hate speech, spam, and other rubbish make their way through digital connections as well."

"Poor images are thus popular images—images that can be made and seen by the many...The condition of the images speaks not only of countless transfers and reformattings, but also of the countless people who cared enough about them to convert them over and over again, to add subtitles, reedit, or upload them."

"Now many of these works are back—as poor images, I admit. One could of course argue that this is not the real thing, but then—please, anybody—show me this real thing.

The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality."

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