We recreated photo images by using a text character-based system to replace the typical gray scale shading which makes up an image. This concept represents a literal depiction of how programming code, typically behind an image, can become the image. In keeping with the theme, each picture is accompanied by a related headline written in Java syntax. For example, the secretary ready to jot a memo on her notepad has the headline, “addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, takeMemoNow);” which means I’m standing by and once I hear your mouse click I’m going to run the function “takeMemoNow”.
After selecting the 16 characters to create the gray-scale we had to determine the right font size and adjust the tracking to produce the desired result. This system was then applied to an animation of each image fading in and out to create the final animation. This technique can be applied to color images as well but the simplicity of black and white was better suited to our retro images.