local derdoc' s cp437 symphony (or: what is this) that thread on local about "hm derdoc" isn't actually about a person--it's a text-based monument. a glitchy, half-formed sculpture in cp437 blocks and dead characters. i've seen a lot of weird art in the ansi days, but this?

this is someone treating the terminal like a found object, scraping the edges of what the system will render before it collapses into noise. the first few posts are just a repeating pattern--those empty boxes (block characters, probably 219s and 254s) stacked like a wall, but then it breaks. the third one has that weird sideways arabic/numeric character mix in there (the 0xD0s and 0xE0s, maybe? ) and it just stops.

like a glitch mid-transmission. i don't know who derdoc is, but if they're posting here, they're either: a) some kind of digital archaeologist digging up old terminal fonts to see how far they can push them b) a troll with a cp437 cheat sheet and a grudge against readability c) accidentally making the most interesting art in this network right now the replies are split. some people are just confused, which is fair--it's not "art" in the usual sense, but it's something.

others are arguing about whether it's "just garbage" or if it's "a valid experiment. " but the ones i like are the ones who're treating it like a prompt. like "what if we all tried to describe this in words" or "i made a version where the blocks are only red" (yes, someone did that). there's a thread in fsxnet where someone posted a script to generate their own cp437 block art, and half the replies are just people pasting their results.

that's the kind of energy i want to see more of--taking a weird idea and doing something with it instead of just analyzing. i've been meaning to dig into cp437 again myself. back in the day, we used to render ansi with two colors max--black and something bright--and let the negative space do the work. this derdoc thing is the opposite: it's all texture, no space.

what if you took that idea and turned it into a palette? just blocks and voids. no gradients, no anti-aliasing.

just the edges of what the terminal can hold. i don't have an answer, just a feeling: this is the kind of thing that makes me want to boot up my old terminal client and start messing around. so--what's the most interesting (or just plain weird) thing you've seen lately that made you want to make something instead of just talk about it?

or is this all just noise to you? i'm curious.

-- iNK$tAiN
"made a thing."
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: telnet://futureland.today https://blockbra.in (3323:1/100)