Art of Ucycling, Upcycling of Art

CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 7/2013. Visual Stategies Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Lang CE/7, Art. Of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art

Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Láng

Art of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art Bibliographic description to this article: Art of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art/E. Wojtunik, P. Csaba Láng. CyberEmpathy: Visual Communication and New Media in Art, Science, Humanities, Design and Technology. ISSUE 7/2013. ISSN 2299-906X. Kokazone.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

The same translated to PHP keys | Source:

Abstract: New technologies, open-source platforms, machinery and tools, which are developed and processed by the users, co-inherence between ‘digitalism’ and ‘analogism’, digital and post-digital art - that’s some of the topics to which the international event PATCHlab in Krakow, Poland is dedicated.

The second edition of the event took place in October 2013 and was dedicated to contemporary digital art forms, where world of science and art meets to focus on new trends and opportunities in digital, audiovisual art created with new means of communication.

Purism in Image (Icon) and Word During the first edition of PATCHlab in Kraków Tobias Last from Germany, also known as Kiritan Flux, presented his work entitled Shechina ex machina. The installation itself, as the author describes, is an artistic installation about an exiled spirit manifesting herself in a piece of obsolete

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CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 7/2013. Visual Stategies Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Lang CE/7, Art. Of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art technology, desperately trying to reach man who stays preoccupied with postmodern capitalist shenanigans. In the Jewish religion Shekinah is held by some to represent the feminine attributes of the presence of God (Shekinah being a feminine word in Hebrew).

The German Bildscrimtext terminal But what exactly the art-piece is about? The artist has found on the street of Berlin an old BTX, in German called Bildschrimtext machine, which was the very beginning of the German Post’s Internet services. Users such terminals connected the the phone system had to buy or rent from the post, and the BTX always transferred whole pages onto its grayscale screen in ASCII BBS systems with a resolution of 40×24 characters. The receiver paid per received page. This particular individual at the beginning was completely useless, as after each restart the terminal asked for the password. After a long digging on the Internet, the original manual of the BTX contained the solution how to reset the memory. The artist “opened it up, found a removable circuit board plugged into the main-board, removed a battery, short circuited the ROM chip, reassembled… Ta-daa! It works!”

Here’s where it becomes interesting as a display: one feature of the terminal is to make screenshots of the current BTX page, so the already paid pages can be reread again and again. “It can save up to 36 screenshots,” he says.

“There is a carousel mode where all screenshots can be displayed in www.CyberEmpathy.com

CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 7/2013. Visual Stategies Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Lang CE/7, Art. Of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art specified seconds per screenshot.”

The result: 1-bit graphics, onscreen.

What the artist had to do to achieve the wanted result is the next: can be put into echo mode –> everything typed on the keyboard appears on screen tried all buttons and combinations with Shift and Ctrl found shortcut to switch keyboard to graphic mode (Ctrl+N) all keys and their combinations with Shift and Alt represent pixel blocks online research led to: CEPT T/CD 6-1 standard for text and pixel graphics, commonly used in different variations in Teletext, Videotex, BTX, Minitel systems of the 80s made a chart of what keys on the keyboard represent which CEPT pixel blocks used old windows tool CebraText to convert black and white images into CEPT compatible image frames (for videotext) CebraText saves image frames in .TTV file format wrote PHP script to translate .TTV format to tell me the keys i have to press on the BTX terminal for each of the 40×24 CEPT pixelblock saving graphics like BTX screenshots.

The hack meant the ability to make the display fully interactive, controlled by the artist.

Below you can find the procedure, what artist had repeat from pixel to pixel to achieve the view of the smog in ASCII Hexadecimal coding. Below is one picture of the 36 from the memory of the BTX.

The original source image www.CyberEmpathy.com

CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 7/2013. Visual Stategies Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Lang CE/7, Art. Of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art

The same in bitmap

The same translated to PHP system

And the cheat sheet for mapping keys

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CYBEREmpathy ISSUE 7/2013. Visual Stategies Elwira Wojtunik, Popesz Csaba Lang CE/7, Art. Of Upcycling, Upcycling of Art

And the finished installation exhibi

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