ASCII Art Via Text: Jonah Kirangi Creates A New Avenue For An Old Medium

ASCII Art Via Text: Jonah Kirangi Creates A New Avenue For An Old Medium

In the near 50 years later after Knowlton printed his first iconic ASCII artwork, there are smartphones that can connect to 3D printers through WiFi, get meta, and print a scale model of an old school printer. That is to say – a lot has changed. But, ASCII art remains rad, and Jonah Kirangi (pictured right) wants to make sure you get your dose of ASCII art via text.

Build Your Own SMS Application with Twilio and Node.js

Jonah didn’t really mean to make an ASCII art via text service. He was looking for a way to test out his new Linode VPS and thought Twilio would do the trick.

“When I first decided to build something with Twilio, I wanted to make an app that replied with a random text message — ASCII art came to mind because it’s simple and interesting to look at. And since it’s delivered via text message, the actual string of text needs to be fairly short, since it should all fit on one line,” said Jonah.

In a weekend hack, he built the application using Node in an effort to get deeper into Javascript development.  “I like the idea of using JavaScript on the server as well as the client — and it seems like there is always something new to learn in the JavaScript world.”

Jonah has had a blast sharing the hack with his friends and family. His favorite line of ASCII art so far –

┏(-_-)┛┗(-_- )┓┗(-_-)┛┏(-_-)┓

We can’t help but agree. Dance on little ASCII dude, dance on.