ASCII Photo Booth by Scott Murray

As you can see, people seemed to have a good time at the ASCII art show on Saturday. I had a blast, and was really pleased with how my ASCII Photo Booth turned out.

The “booth” was weeks in development, and often took priority over my regular school work. But I learned a ton about Processing, worked with live video for the first time, and also figured out how to generate and print PDFs. Also, although I was half-expecting the application to crash at some point, it never did. What more could I have asked for?

Here’s what it looked like during installation:

It was fun watching people use it for the first time, and I got some usability-related insights that will help me improve future installations. But most people understood it right away. You sit down in the chair and see your image translated into ASCII text on the screen. Click the mouse, watch the countdown -- 3… 2… 1… Smile! -- the screen flickers for a moment, and a second later your image emerges on paper from a laser printer. Cool!

Update: Just posted this video of the photo booth in action:

One thing I observed is that the best images were created by the people who didn’t rush and took some time to experiment with the system. They would lean in closer to the camera, then farther back, watching the on-screen text regenerate in response to their motion. The final images were sharpest when the subjects sat completely still before and during the exposure. That felt appropriate, given that ASCII is old technology, originating from a time when computers were much, much slower and unable to process images at all. As with early photography, a clear image in ASCII takes time to develop.

I was happy to see people walk away with a physical artifact of the experience, in this case a photo of themselves or of a friend. I hope that one or two of those dynamically generated, original artworks will end up on a refrigerator somewhere. (If you had your picture taken, leave a comment below and tell me about your experience.)

More pictures from the evening below. The gallery sign (excellently designed by Colin, who curated the show):

JK’s ASCII video wall: