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Pixel Patchwork: “Quiltingin Time” Online

Abstract

BRENDA DANETBrenda Danet is Professor Emerita of Sociology andCommunication at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, and a visiting fellow in Sociology, YaleUniversity, 2000–2003. She has been studyingcommunication and culture on the Internet since1991, and is the author of Cyberpl@y: CommunicatingOnline (Berg Publishers, Oxford, 2001, distributed inthe United States by New York University Press;Companion Website, http://atar.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberpl@y/). Her current researchcombines interests in online communication withconcerns in folk art, material culture, the aesthetics ofeveryday life, and the anthropologyof art and ritual.

Textile, Volume ?, Issue ?, pp. 1–25Reprints available directly from the Publishers.Photocopying permitted by licence only.© 2003 Berg. Printed in the United Kingdom.

“Text” and “textile” share thesame Latin root—textus, or

“woven.” In the 1960s and 1970s adigital form of amateur text-basedart known as “ASCII (pronouncedAS-kee) art,” began to flourish—images created with letters andother typographic symbols on thecomputer keyboard. Since theadvent of Windows 95, participantsin certain “channels” (chatrooms)on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) havedeveloped a brilliantly colored formof text-based art, an elaboration ofASCII art. This art contains muchplay with ornament, pattern, andsymmetry, and may be eitherabstract or figurative. In a highlyritualized mode of playful

communication, images aredisplayed on the screen in realtime to greet other participants.Thus, images are both “art” and“communication.” Despite itsintangibility, this art has manyaffinities with traditional weaving,embroidery and especially quilting.It is a form of “quilting in time”rather than space. Figurativeimages also partially resemblepaper greeting cards. This articlefocuses on an IRC group called“rainbow,” that has communicatedmainly via images since May 1997.The analysis draws on a database ofsome 5,000 images. Sevendistinctive features of this art arediscussed.

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This article is about a novel form ofonline visual expression that I call“pixel patchwork.”1 Instead oftyping words, as is usual in verbalchat, participants in certain“channels” or chatrooms on IRC(Internet Relay Chat), one of theworld’s most popular online chatmodes, interact primarily via thedisplay of brilliantly colored imagescreated with letters and othertypographic symbols on thecomputer keyboard. Text-basedimages have been featured on anumber of IRC channels since1996–7, but have particularlyflourished on #mirc_rainbow,rainbow for short, a channel on theUndernet, a major network of IRCservers.2 “mIRC” is the Windows-based program players use tocommunicate and display images.3

Participants engage in everyday,spontaneous communication viaimages, and also hold scheduledevents such as art shows, channelanniversary celebrations, andbirthday parties, again primarilyfeaturing images rather than words.Though dependent on Windows 95+and in some respects on ratheradvanced computer literacy, artistsemploy very simple, even“primitive” digital techniques, whencompared with cutting-edgecomputer graphics.4 Borrowing aterm from world music, I call this art“avant-folk,” because it strikinglyjuxtaposes considerable skill usingcomputers with naive, group-basedartistic expression resemblingtraditional folk art in important

respects—despite two main,apparent anomalies, the lack oftangibility and of face-to-facecontact between participants.“Folk-like” aspects of the art will bedebated in the concluding sectionof the article.

Figure 1 is an excellentintroduction to rainbow art andcommunication. As is typical ofmany forms of online chat, theplayers use nicknames, called“nicks” on IRC. Three players havedeployed five different images togreet one another. The nick of eachplayer appears at the left of eachline of an image, just as if a persontyped ordinary text.

First, <rebel^>, a Texas housewifeand Web page designer, greets meas I enter the channel—my nick is<doremi>.5 Next, <Steakie^>, a malesignage installer from Pennsylvania,greets <swt1^> and <aisa>, whotypes “hello” followed by eightinverted exclamation points, givingaway her Spanish origins. Then<swt1^> acknowledges <Steakie>,who greets her a second time,adding the words, “how ya been?”All have mobilized ready-made filesfrom collections stored on their harddisks, incorporating the recipient’snick just before displaying them.

Visual images composed fromthe elements of writing have a longhistory. Antecedents includepattern, concrete or visual poetry,Islamic calligraphy, micrography,typewriter art, and teletype art.6 Themost recent antecedent is ASCII(AS-kee) art—images created using

Pixel Patchwork: “Quilting inTime” Online

3Pixel Patchwork: “Quilting in Time” Online

the basic typographic characters onthe computer keyboard.7 Since the1960s and 1970s, programmers,hackers, and other mostly malecomputer professionals have beencreating images from letters,numbers, and other typographicsymbols. By the 1990s, people of allwalks of life, all ages, women aswell as men, were collecting andcreating ASCII art.

IRC art is an elaboration of ASCIIart. This is most apparent when IRCart is figurative: three images inFigure 1 contain adaptations ofASCII art creations by Joan Stark, anOhio housewife and mother, and apopular artist whose works areoften adapted for IRC. Therepresentation of lightning in thefirst image, the small angels in thesecond, and the cartoon-like image

of “Nessie,” the Loch Ness monster,in the third are all originallydesigned by her. <sher^> adaptedthe lightning and monster motifs forIRC (and also designed the last “HI”image).

Interaction on rainbow can bepuzzling to the casual observer.Participants spend hours and hoursin the channel, day after day, evenyear after year, endlessly greeting

Figure 1A series of greetings on #mirc_rainbow.

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and acknowledging one another viaimages, never saying much in theconventional sense. Usually, thereis not even much small talk. What,then, can be the fascination? Surely,the sheer novelty of thephenomenon must wear off.

The goal of this article is toidentify the distinctive features ofthis novel art, and to explain how italso serves as a language ofcommunication. I will attempt to doso in a manner comprehensible toreaders not necessarily familiar withthe Internet or with this specificphenomenon. I aspire both to

identify affinities with traditional,material-based arts and crafts, andto illuminate novel aspects of thisdigital phenomenon. Mydescriptions and analyses draw ona database of approximately 5,000images captured and saved over aperiod of five and a half years, usingPaint Shop Pro, a graphicsprogram.8 In the conclusion to thearticle I will allude to some of thedirections that my analysis of thisart and communication have taken.In addition, I will attempt to make acase for viewing this art as anincipient form of digital folk art.

Figure 2An abstract image by <nuffers>.


Introduction The words “text,” “texture,” and“textile” all have the same root—theLatin textus, “woven.” While carpetsare usually knotted or woven fromthe bottom up, this digital art is“woven” from the top down, left toright, as in knitting and ordinaryword-processing. When creating anIRC image, one “knits” each “stitch”from left to right, determiningwhether it will contain a typographicsymbol or not, what color it will be,

and what color the background willbe. While shortcuts of various kindscan be used to make the processless tedious, the fundamentalprocess remains the same.

Types of rainbow art and links totraditional folk artRainbow art may be either abstractor figurative; both are about equallycommon. In abstract images,typographic symbols are typicallyrepeated in patterned ways, though

not always as elaborately as inFigure 2. Figurative images are“drawn” with typographic symbols,either in so-called “solid style”(Figure 3), or “line style” (Figure 4),as has been true also of ASCII art.

While abstract images arealmost without exception originalworks by IRC artists, many, perhapsmost figurative images incorporateand adapt works taken from ASCIIart collections on the Web, as in theinstances noted in Figure 1, and as

Figure 3A figurative image by <jazzman>,incorporating an ASCII rose by NormandVeilleux, http://www.afn.org/~afn39695/veilleux.htm.

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is also the case for the rose in Figure3, originally by Normand Veilleux.9

The arrangement of cats in Figure 4is again based on a design of asingle cat by Joan Stark, but nowtransformed considerably becauseof the carefully planned repetitionsof the basic design element.10

These examples suggest thatfigurative images are generally two-dimensional, non-illusionistic,stylized, seemingly frozen in timeand space, like those in many typesof traditional folk art. Similarly,abstract designs often resemblegeometric designs in carpets,weavings, cross-stitch embroidery,needlepoint, and patchwork quilts.11

Rainbow images resemble works inthese crafts primarily because theytoo are created on a grid, notnecessarily visible to the eye.

From material to digital quiltingRainbow art is a form of “quilting intime,” rather than space, in whichthe “patches” consist only of bitsand bytes. The display of images insocial context partially resemblestraditional North American quiltingbees, in which women met not onlyto combine the layers of a quilt, butalso to socialize. The womenchatted while working, and after thequilting the men joined them forsocializing and dancing (Dewhurstet al. 1979: 51–2; Yabsley 1984: 56).While social aspects of quilting werecertainly important, traditionalquilts were primarily functionaldomestic objects in poor homes,made from scraps of old clothing tokeep people warm as bedcovers.

Rainbow images do not havesuch utilitarian functions. However,

Figure 4A stylized figurative image by <dale^>,adapted from an ASCII design byJoan Stark, http://web.archive.org/web/20010411185704/www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/pets.htm.


displays of images do serve animportant function of a differentkind: they facilitate the cultivationof group ties, not just in a brief,scheduled event, as is true ofquiltings, but over an extendedperiod of time—weeks, months,even years. Behind the façade ofgroup activity, I have learned, manyindividuals come to cultivate privaterelationships, in two-party onlineconversations, parallel to thegroup’s channel and not visible toothers, and in subsidiary channelsthe players have created. Theseinclude a second channel where

some players go to receive technicalhelp, to rehearse displays, and tochat in verbal text mode. There ispoignancy in this form of onlinequilting: whereas a cloth quiltpersists over time, long after thesocial relationships surroundingits creation and use no longer exist,this art is entirely ephemeral—just how ephemeral is explainedbelow.

Despite the analogy to quilting,rainbow players do not use termsassociated with it. They speak of“coloring” and “drawing” “art,” inrather child-like fashion. Still, the

analogy is salient for some. Awoman nicknamed <patches> waswebmistress for the channelwebsite and channel “owner” orleader from 1999 to 2002. As hernickname hints, she is anexperienced quilter, who claims tohave sold commissioned quilts forthousands of dollars. In a privatechat in 1997 I asked her if she saw aresemblance between IRC art andquilting. She immediately displayedfor me three quilt patterns she hadtransformed into IRC images. One ofthese, “Trip Around the World,” isshown in Figure 5.

Figure 5“Trip Around the World,” an IRC versionof a traditional American quilt pattern, by<patches>.

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Social History of rainbowRainbow came into existence in May1997, when, unhappy about theautocratic and tension-ladenatmosphere in another Undernetchannel featuring images and called“#mirc_colors,” three membersdefected to create a new channelwith a more egalitarian, freeratmosphere. Since then, rainbowhas flourished, despite quite highturnover among participants. Afairly stable core of regulars and awell-organized set of ongoingartistic and social practices havecrystallized. Hundreds of peoplehave participated over the years,though just how many is impossibleto determine. Some drop in justonce, never to return; othersparticipate regularly for months andeven years at a time. At the presenttime, some seventy-five individualsare members of the “in-group,”serving as “ops,” operators in IRClingo—participants withadministrative duties andprivileges, who help run thechannel. Many are also artists.

I estimate that over time, some150 artists have contributed to thepool of images shared by all.Non-artists regularly use imagescreated by others as “tokens forinteraction.“ Some sets of imagesare devoted to the work ofindividual artists. In theseinstances, the work of a single artistis honored in a scheduled show,and then the file is immediatelyreleased for all to use in ordinaryinteraction.

Other sets of files combine thework of many different artists,grouped by theme, such as“winterfun,” “Christmas,” or“jokes.” These files, too, are sharedby all. On 30 December, 2002 there

were no less than 248 sets of filesavailable for downloading from thechannel website, the large majorityof which had been created byrainbow artists. If one estimates 100images per set (too low in myexperience, in many instances), thisis an output of some 25,000images.

The players are of lower-middle-class to lower-class background,and generally have had some high-school education, or are high-schoolgraduates; some have post-high-school vocational training. Few areprofessionals. About 60% arewomen and 40% men; most are intheir thirties, forties, and fifties,though there are also teenagers andpeople in their sixties andseventies. Most are Americansconcentrated in the West,Southwest, and South, with asmattering of people from manyother countries. Some channelleaders have had higher levels ofeducation than rank-and-fileplayers. <sher^>, the current leader,is a housewife married to a coalminer. Not surprisingly, a fairnumber of artists have previousexperience with materially basedcrafts such as quilting, sewing, andembroidery. I know of only oneprofessionally trained artist with anMFA among currently active artists.

Features of Rainbow ArtI turn now to a discussion of sevendistinctive features of rainbow art(Figure 6).

InteractivityThe first, fundamental feature ofthis art listed in Figure 6 isinteractivity. This term means manythings to many people.12 Here, it


means that people interact directlywith other people in real time, andnot just with computers or with Webpages. This contrasts sharply withtwo other online “quilting”phenomena, both on the WorldWide Web.

Since approximately 2001,digital “friendship quilts,” Web-based assemblages of “patches”contributed by various individuals,generally women, can be found onthe Web. They are an adaptation ofthe idea of traditional Americanfriendship quilts, which were “madeup of a one-block pattern repeatedthroughout the entire quilt . . .many, or all, of the blocks in a quilthave names on them, eitherinscribed in ink or embroidered insilk thread or cotton floss” (Lipsett1997: 16).13 Friends and relativeseach contributed a block with theirnames on them.

Figure 7 is an excellent exampleof a traditional friendship quilt.Made about 1888 in Cayuga County,upstate New York, it was presentedto Reverend Cordello C. Herrick andhis wife Emily Elizabeth TaylorHerrick. It now hangs in the familyroom of Brian Wells Galusha and hiswife, the great-granddaughter ofthis couple.14

The size of the patches in digitalfriendship quilts (Figure 8)

crystallized at 130 × 130 pixels,perfect squares. Typically, there arefour or five patches in a row, andfive or more rows. Many patches arelive: clicking on them leads directlyto the Website of the personcontributing them. Some are alsoanimated. Patches are usuallyfigurative, greeting-card-like inimagery and accompanying mini-texts, as in Figure 8, the upperportion of a digital friendship quiltby Suzie Radant, a Michiganresident, who calls her site “Suzie’sCyber Cloud Quilts: Quilts withMeaning.”

Most digital quilters offerdownloadable patches to others.Sharing is a way of being in touchwith others and making friends. Thelinks between sites constitute asocial network of sorts, and somesites are organized into webrings.Suzie Radant manages a Webringcalled “Quilting Circle of Friends.”Compared to rainbow, whoseparticipants interact in real time,social ties among these digitalquilters seem weak, and are, at theleast, invisible to the casual visitorto their sites.15

Another, very differentsubculture of digital quilting, onlinesince November 2000, is a branch ofthe computer underground artscene, located at Tiles.ice.org. Until

recently, the iconography of thesemainly male groups of teenagersand young adults was lurid,transgressive, often violent,drawing on comics, science fiction,horror films, and other elements inpopular culture. While these trendsare still in evidence, changes arealso afoot. Surprisingly, someartists are now creating large,generally surrealistic images theytoo call “quilts.”16 Participantswork on “tiles”—their term forpatches—of huge figurative,high-resolution images, done byindividuals who do not knowmuch about what is adjacent. JonShirin, aka “slothy,” theenterprising promoter of this formof amateur art and manager of thesite, writes:

Tiles.ice.org is iCE’s answer tothe old-fashioned quilt party,minus the gathering of elderlywomen. It’s a unique opportunityfor collaborative [sic] artwork onthe net. A huge image,composed of individual ‘tiles’ iscreated, one piece at a time. Thegoal when making a tile is tomesh your work as smoothly aspossible with the surroundingtiles, while creating somethingcool, artistic, and if applicable,on-topic.

1. Interactivity2. Ephemerality3. Use of brilliant color4. Sound clips: trend toward multimedia performance5. Prominence of ornament, pattern, and symmetry6. Eccentric typography: extended ASCII characters7. Prefabricated utterances in figurative images

Figure 6Seven features of rainbow art.

10 Brenda Danet

Figure 7A traditional American friendship quilt,presented to Reverend Cordello C.Herrick and his wife Emily ElizabethTaylor Herrick, Cayuga County, upstateNew York, c. 1888 (full view, detail).http://www.rootsweb.com/~nycayuga/quilt/#quilt. Photos courtesy ofBrian Wells Galusha.


Participation resembles workingtogether on a giant puzzle—but inthis case creating it, not puttingknown parts together. Artists aregiven just a fifteen-pixel border ofadjacent material, so they can aligntheir creation with the rest of thedesign. “Signing out” a given tile,they must complete it in twenty-fourhours; if not, it becomes available toothers. Holding the cursor overthese works, visitors cantemporarily reveal informationabout the creators of individualtiles.

A quilt in progress as of January2002 (Figure 9) was called “Knots.”Knots and ropes of endless varietiesof texture, color and shape were“braided” together. Participants inthese digital quilts are primarilycreating collective artworks, notcultivating social ties or expressinggroup solidarity, as I shall argue isthe case for rainbow players,although they do tend to think ofthemselves as a community.Revisiting the site in January 2003, Ilearned that “Knots” was one of noless than ninety-seven completed

quilts. Twenty-two individuals hadcontributed to it.17

EphemeralityA second distinctive feature ofrainbow art (Figure 6) is that it istruly ephemeral, even more so thanASCII art, even though both consistof bits and bytes. Whereas ASCII artcan be viewed offline on a computerin any text-editing program,ordinarily rainbow art can be viewedonly when (1) one is logged on tothe Internet; (2) the mIRC program isopen; (3) one has connected

Figure 8Upper portion of a digital friendship quiltby Suzie Radant (upper portion), “Suzie’sCyber Cloud Quilts: Quilts withMeaning,” http://suzieque.net/friendshipquilt.htm.

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successfully to an IRC server; and(4) one has joined a channel.18 Also,while one can print ASCII art, IRCimages can be printed only if theyare first transformed into regulargraphic images, as I have done,both in my research generally, andin the case of all illustrations for thisarticle. Similarly, IRC images mustbe transformed into graphic imagesfor display on the Web.

Brilliant colorAnother important characteristic ofIRC art is the burst into brilliantcolor, not visible in the print versionof the illustrations for this article. Itspredecessor, ASCII art, is usuallyshown white on black, or black on awhite background. On earlycomputer screens it was displayedin phosphorescent green or amberpixels on a dark screen.

The sixteen colors that may beused in mIRC, as in any Windows-based program, include the threeprimary colors, red, yellow, andblue, as well many other shades,along with black, gray, and white.One can choose the color both ofthe typographic symbol in a given“slot” in an image and of itsbackground. One can also createimages consisting of just solidcolors, though this is much rarer.Although one can not mix colors, viacareful control of adjacent colorsone can create three-dimensionaleffects, and modify the appearanceof a given color. The diamond-shaped image in Figure 10 appearsto have depth because of thecontrolled use of black, blue-black,bright blue, gray, and white. Theeffect resembles some 1960s Op Art(Parola 1996).

Figure 9“Knots,” detail from a computerunderground “quilt” in progress,January 2002. http://Tiles.ice.org.


The players’ love of bright coloris sometimes quite explicit. Oneimage included the mini-text, “Hey!Look! They’ve added colors to thisblack and white world.” Love for thejuxtaposition of many bright colorsis also reflected in the channelname, rainbow.

What Hans and ShulamithKreitler have written about the loveof color characterizes rainbowplayers too:

The love of color is especiallyprominent in childhood and inpre-literate societies, as well asin adults who undergo aloosening of conscious controldue to autism, regression, orpsychosis or to a poisonousdelirium or a drug-induced

intoxication . . . color [is] a factorappealing to the deepernonrational layers of personality(Kreitler and Kreitler 1972: 54–5).

Especially when alternated, gaudycolors are perceived to ward off evilin many cultures (Paine 1990: 148).

David Batchelor (2001: 31–2)notes that there is an oldrelationship between drugs andcolor. Aristotle “called color adrug—pharmakon . . . to . . . Plato. . . a painter was merely ‘a grinderand mixer of multi-colour drugs’”(Batchelor 2001), citing Lichtenstein(1993: 54) and Riley (1995: 20). Ofmore recent times, Batchelor notes:

During the 1960s . . . drugs werecommonly . . . associated . . .

with the intensification ofcolour . . . Think of psychedelia;think of the album covers, theposters, the lyrics . . .—Ecstasy . . . is the name givento a widely used psychotropicstimulant, but it is also asynonym for Roland Barthes’remarkable description ofcolour . . . Bliss, jouissance,ecstasy . . . “Colour . . . is a kindof bliss . . . like a closing eyelid,a tiny fainting spell” (Batchelor2001: 31–2).

The color red is particularlyprominent in rainbow imagery ofboth figurative and abstract kinds,not just in images conventionallyassociated with Christmas,Valentine’s Day, or the Fourth of

Figure 10A three-dimensional design by<nightrose>.

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July, but in everyday ones too. TheKreitlers (1972: 69) suggest that redis “the most meaning-laden color,”carrying associations both to lifeand birth and to danger and death.“More than any other, the color redis perceived as a carrier of force”(Varichon, 2000: 69; mytranslation). In many cultures it isassociated with magic and ritual(Hibi 2000; Varichon 2000). SheilaPaine sums up many of thesethemes:

Red is the most powerful, themost vibrant, the mostexhilarating of colors; it is theblood of life and of death . . . it isalso ambiguous: life, fire, thesun and power arecounterbalanced by sacrifice anddeath. Red threads and fabricsare associated with spiritworship and demons, with youthand marriage, with talismaniccharms and secret powers. It isthe predominant colour in alltribal and peasant embroidery,but is used in two entirelydifferent ways—to protect and tomark (Paine 1990: 148).

Black is also very prominent inrainbow art, primarily as filledbackground, for both abstract andfigurative images. While theKreitlers summarize researchindicating that black “implies death,night, anxiety, defeat, anddepression” (Kreitler and Kreitler1972: 69), it is also often associatedwith magic and mystery. Thisassociation is relevant here too, asin the black of the darkened theaterenhancing the magic of aperformance. Black helps to conjureup a protected, magical space, setoff from the potentially ominous

messiness of the physical world.More pragmatically, a blackbackground also contrasts well withthe use of bright colors; whenimages are backlit on the computerscreen, the colors seem to glow.

Sound clips: the trend towardmultimedia performanceFourth, rainbow images are oftendisplayed together with a briefsound clip, either of songs or, lesscommonly, of real-life sounds suchas something crashing, or laughter.The players create and collectsounds, to a lesser extent than theycreate and collect images. Manyscheduled shows have sets ofsound files to go with them. Playersmust download and install thesound files in advance. Only ifsounds are already on players’ harddisks will they be able to hear themwhen activated in context. A specialgenre developed for shows is“timed texts,” extended sequencesof large images accompanied bylonger sound clips, even wholesongs.

Prominence of ornament,pattern, and symmetryFifth, and perhaps most importantfor my research agenda, rainbow artfeatures prominent ornament,pattern, and symmetry, as isabundantly clear in Figures 2 and 4.James Trilling (2001: 6) definesornament as “the elaboration offunctionally complete objects for thesake of visual pleasure.” The GroveDictionary of Art offers a broaderdefinition; ornament and patternare:

decorative devices applied orincorporated as embellishment.


[They] are not generally essentialto the structure of an object, butthey can . . . emphasize ordisguise structural elements,particularly in architecture, andthey can fulfil an iconographicrole . . .19

The creation of pattern relies onthree characteristics, a unit,repetition of that unit, and a systemof organization.

A pattern can be defined as adesign composed of one or moremotifs, multiplied and arrangedin an orderly sequence, and asingle motif as a unit with whichthe designer composes a patternby repeating it at regularintervals over a surface. Themotif itself is not a pattern, but itis used to create patterns(Phillips and Bunce 1993: 7).

In theory, rainbow players couldcreate images consisting just of oneblock of solid color, inserting therecipient’s nick before displayingthem. In terms of communicativefunction narrowly construed, such“plain” images would be adequate.In fact, participants never play suchimages. In five and a half years offollowing the channel, I have neverseen a single image without either afigurative component or some playwith color or typography or both,creating some kind of pattern orsymmetry.

“Symmetry . . . is one idea bywhich man through the ages hastried to comprehend and createorder, beauty, and perfection” (Weyl1952: 5). It pertains to “thecorrespondence in size, form andarrangement of parts on oppositesides of a plane, line, or point,” orto “regularity of form or

arrangement with reference tocorresponding parts.”20 Myanalyses suggest that the turn topattern and symmetry in rainbowart has deep psychological andsocial roots, and that verticalbilateral symmetry in particularserves as a visual metaphor forcommunitas (Pocius 1979; Danet inpreparation).

It is intriguing that there is littleevidence of concern with patternand symmetry in the earlier ASCIIart, which is almost entirelyfigurative. In contrast, pattern andsymmetry abound in rainbow art,not only in all-over abstract designslike Figure 2, but also in the fields offigurative designs (Figure 4),21 andparticularly in the borderssurrounding many images, whetherabstract or figurative. In Figure 11the border is especially elaborate,far more so, in fact, than the field.

Figure 11Pattern and symmetry in the border of a“multiple,” by <sher^>.

16 Brenda Danet

This is an example of a “multiple,” asubgenre of images the playersdeveloped in which it is possible tohonor or acknowledge two or moreindividuals by nick at the sametime. Here, nine players arehonored, including me.

Eccentric typography: extendedASCII charactersVery frequently, pattern andsymmetry feature unfamiliar, so-called extended ASCII characters, asin Figure 2, typographic symbolsthat require eight bits to code them,

Figure 12A selection of extended ASCII charactersand their codes.


not seven. Therefore they are notused in plain text such as e-mail.Symbols such as the Japanese Yensign ¥ and the š of Slavic languagesare appreciated for their interestinggraphic shapes and potential asdesign elements, both within imagefields and in borders.

Figure 12 displays someextended ASCII characters with thecodes for creating them manually.We can see that systematicrepetition creates interesting visualpatterns. Evidently, because manysymbols are exotic to artists, mostlynative English speakers, they canmore easily pay attention to theirgraphic possibilities than if symbolsare very familiar. Symbols fromeveryday English usage not used inplain text are also popular,including the British £ symbol, aswell as those for “copyright” and“registered”—© and ®. In Figure 2a rich sense of texture was created

with just two extended ASCIIsymbols.

Occasionally, rainbow artistsalso use exotic typographic symbolsto enhance the words in short texts;they call this practice the use of“fancy letters.” Originally, it washackers who used eccentrictypographic characters in plain text,intentionally reducing legibility.They did so in order to annoy, to beoutrageous and transgressive, andto signal membership in an elitistin-group. It is ironic that IRC playershave domesticated anddemocratized this practice. Forthem, eccentric typography inmeaningful verbal texts is merelydecorative and ceremonial.

Pre-fabricated utterances infigurative imagesA final distinctive feature of rainbowart is the inclusion of a short text in

figurative images, as in traditionalpaper greeting cards. The mini-textin Figure 3 is typical: “I searched theworld for a perfect rose . . . I foundyou . . . perfect as a rose.” Rainbowartists no doubt draw on theirexperience with paper greetingcards when designing figurativeworks and composing the mini-textsto go with them. These mini-textstransform images from “just art”into usable potential tokens forinteraction. They are a variety of“pre-fabricated utterances”(Herrnstein-Smith 1978: 59), verbalstructures pre-assembled for lateruse as natural utterances. Thefunction of a greeting-card messageis “not to represent a naturalutterance but to become one”(Herrnstein-Smith 1978: 60).

Some mini-texts aresentimental, like the one in Figure3; others are humorous and light-hearted, like the punning example

Figure 13A humorous figurative image, by <glint>,adapted from a work by Joan Stark,http://web.archive.org/web/20010411185704/www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/pets.htm.

18 Brenda Danet

in Figure 13: Hey there . . . did youhear? Fedex and UPS are buying outthe US Postal Service . . . They aregoing to call it ‘FEDUP.” Some aremetaphoric or non-executable innature, as in the invitation, “Sailaway with me,” combined with animage of a sailboat. This mixture ofserious, even sentimental elementsand humorous ones points to thehybrid nature of rainbow art andcommunication as paradoxicallyboth mock and serious.22

DiscussionThis overview of rainbow art hasshown that it shares many featureswith traditional arts and crafts, yetin other respects is a unique digital,online phenomenon. The most novelfeatures are its intangibility andephemerality, and its role as alanguage of communication in realtime, among people who mostlyhave never met in the physicalworld.

Appropriation versus creativityI have noted that rainbow artistsfrequently appropriate ASCII worksfrom collections on the Web whendesigning figurative images.Therefore, some might concludethat there is little creativity in thefigurative varieties of this art. Theymight claim that all artists are doingis recoding and coloring images foruse on IRC—mere technicalexercises. On the contrary, I wouldargue, there is considerablecreativity in choosing an image,determining a demarcated space forit and locating it in that space,23

choosing the colors to be used,designing a complementary border,often with some of the same, or atleast coordinated colors, and

preparing a suitable mini-text tobring it to life as a potentialcommunicative act, as in Figures 3and 13.

Some artists specialize increating figurative images. Othersare very skilled in creating original,pleasing patterns and types ofsymmetry, including some that aredifficult to execute in this medium.Indeed, the artists enjoy thechallenge of creating ever-new andstriking effects and genres ofimages, pushing this very restrictedmedium to its limits.

Striving for good gestaltsThis article has been primarilydescriptive. In further work onrainbow art, only hinted at here, Iexamine evidence for thehypothesis that creating, playing,and viewing images are all meansfor the players to strive for a senseof closure, completion, orperfection—in other words, for“good gestalts”—for forms that arecharacterized by “regularity,symmetry, inclusiveness, unity,harmony, maximal simplicity, andconciseness” (Kreitler and Kreitler1972: 83). The notion of gestaltpertains to our tendency to perceivea stimulus as “whole” even if someportion of it is absent, or to prefer“wholes” to stimuli that are lessthan whole. A basic assumption ofgestalt theory is that peoplenaturally strive for good gestalts, forstimuli that are organized. Thetheory contends that unorganizedstimuli are experienced as tensionproducing, whereas organizedstimuli are experienced as tensionreducing. 24

Thinking primarily of primitive orethnographic art, Hans andShulamith Kreitler noted that:


The art of primitive peoplesconsists mainly of good gestalts,characterized by simplicity,closure, regularity and symmetry. . . it is this function of the visualarts—the presentation of goodgestalts—which lends meaningto the image of the artist as agod or magician who lures orderout of chaos and vanquishes theformless by forms (Kreitler andKreitler 1972: 91–2; italicsadded).

My research suggests that rainbowparticipants have a strong need forclosure, for good gestalts.

Because the pursuit of closure inrainbow art occurs in a socialcontext, I believe that formalaspects of images are not just ofpsychological significance, but alsohave important connections withthe social nature of communicationonline. That is, a case can be madethat creating, playing, and viewingimages with certain formalcharacteristics are also a means tostrive for enclosure—for a sense ofbelonging, for communitas (Turner1969, 1974). In this context, theconnection between the terms“closure” and “enclosure” is notmerely eytomological, butempirical. The many forms ofrepetition in images serve asmetaphors for togetherness.Indeed, one could almost reducethis thesis to a formula:

(Visual) twoness = (social)togetherness.

One striking type of evidence forthe claim that rainbow artists andplayers strive for good gestaltspertains to emergent norms aboutthe use of ASCII art in their work,

and acceptable forms of credit foraccomplishment. Surprisingly, mostrainbow artists embed the name,initials or nickname of the ASCIIartist whose work has beenappropriated, along with their ownnick, in the hidden coding of theimage, making credit for the artistsinvisible when the image isdisplayed online in full color. Those“in the know” are aware that hiddeninitials, nicks, or names of artistsmay be viewed (generally after thefact) in black and white channellogs, or, more conveniently, whenone sweeps the cursor briefly overan image currently displayed. Thisdepletes the image of colortemporarily and reveals hiddenmaterial. However, those not awareof these options would never learnthe identities of artists via either ofthem.25

Obviously, this practice isradically different from theconvention of the artist’s signatureon a work, which overtly claimscredit for achievement, and assertsintellectual property rightsregarding its disposition. In a queryaddressed to rainbow ops andartists on their Yahoo group forum, Iasked if this practice did not depriveartists of full credit. To my greatsurprise, several artists replied thatmaking names and initials visiblewould spoil the image: thus,creating and viewing good gestaltsare, evidently, more important tothem than intellectual propertyrights.

Avoiding extraneous materialthat would “spoil” an image is justone of eight strategies that I haveidentified that players and artistsuse in pursuit of good gestalts.Unfortunately, for lack of space,details of other strategies and

accompanying examples could notbe included here, except for severalhints that the concern with patternand symmetry is critical.26 Contraryto Trilling’s (2001) view of ornamentas nonfunctional embellishmentpurely for visual pleasure,ornament, pattern, and symmetry—along with certain aspects of theiconography of figurative images—are not merely decorative. Rather,they reflect and express profoundpsychological and social needs andaspirations among rainbow playersand artists.

Rainbow art as digital folk artAs suggested at the beginning ofthis article, I believe that rainbowart may be viewed as an incipientform of digital folk art. On the faceof it, several glaringly anomalousaspects of this art make such aclaim seem foolhardy.

First, the art is hardly“traditional,” since it has been inexistence only since the advent ofWindows 95 and the Windowsversion of the IRC software. Incontrast, for folklorists, traditioninvolves entire generations ofindividuals, families, groups,handing down certain practices,and, no less important, primarily inface-to-face interaction. Mostrainbow participants, on the otherhand, have never met in thephysical world. Moreover, asmentioned earlier, there has beenconsiderable turnover among theplayers, despite a devoted core ofregulars.

Finally, unlike traditional folk artas we know it today, there is nomarket for this art, which circulatesin a gift economy, rather than onebased on money. Not monetaryvalue, but reputation among the

20 Brenda Danet

players and other artists, within thegroup and on IRC generally, and theaesthetic satisfactions of creatingthe art are what motivates artists.

Despite these anomalies, twomain features of this art justifyviewing it as a form of digital folkart, in my opinion. Contemporaryformulations of the field of folkloremake these anomalies far lessglaring than they appear on firstsight. Henry Glassie has written,“Today we think of folklore not as akind of material but as a kind ofaction” (Glassie 1989: 34, italicsadded). A particularly influentialdefinition is that of Dan Ben Amos,for whom folklore is “artisticcommunication in small groups”(Ben Amos 1971). While the focus onthis definition is on communication,the smallness of the group iscertainly a potential issue in thepresent context.

Rainbow players can be said tobe creating an instant tradition. It isunsettling that the Internet speedsup social processes that in the pastwe expected to take years, decades,generations. Despite the turnoveramong participants to which I havealluded, there are remarkablecontinuities over the last five yearsin channel practices. Moreover, theplayers have domesticated themedium of computer text art,formerly the domain oftransgressive hackers, in a mannerthat reinforces traditional values offamily and friendship, socialacceptance and support. Figurativeimages are very often “sweet,” oftencute, heartwarming, sometimesgushingly sentimental, or, lesscommonly, tension-reducingthrough humor, as in Figure 13. Inonline interviews with ops, manycharacterized rainbow as “a family.”

The folklorist John Michael Vlach(1992: 19) has pointed out that “Theconcept of group art implies, indeedrequires, that artists acquire theirabilities, both manual andintellectual, at least in part fromcommunication with others.”Certainly, this is true for rainbowartists and players. The primaryduty of ops is to teach others how tocreate and display the art. And wehave seen that some forms of theart are the focus of scheduledshows, which scores of players andeven casual visitors to the channelattend. The art is a means tocelebrate holidays as well as someplayers’ birthdays. Most of all, asthis article has shown in countlessways, the art is itself a form ofcommunication: one experiences it,either while displaying or viewing it,primarily in real-timecommunication with others. Theplayers have a strong sense of “co-presence,” despite the mediatednature of their interaction (Biocca1997; Lombard and Ditton 1997;Jacobson 2002).

In recent discussions of folk art,we sometimes encounter ostensiblyalternative terms such as “naïveart” and “outsider art” (Zolberg andCherbo 1997; Fine, in preparation).In fact, whereas individuals labelednaive or outsider artists typicallywork alone, folk artists work in agroup context. “Folk art says ‘Weare,’ but the works of [naive artists]cry ‘I am’” (Crease and Mann 1983:91, cited in Dubin 1997: 39). In thissense rainbow art isquintessentially folk!

What of the craft aspects ofrainbow imagery? Here too thereare glaring anomalies, at first sight.As I wrote in Cyberpl@y (Danet2001),


. . . prima facie, the case for thisform of expression as craft seemslost. Craft involves thedemonstration of skill in themanipulation of material withone’s hands and careful eye–hand coordination. Not only didthis art lack physicality, but ourtraditional notion of the“handmade” seems totallyinapplicable. Surely, amachine—the computer—hastaken over the work of the handand therefore one may no longerspeak of craft (Danet 2001: 253).

Many would argue, evenvehemently, that rainbow “quilting”lacks the satisfactions of traditionalquilting. Judy Elsley beautifullyarticulated some of thesesatisfactions for quilters:

Quilting is quiet, slow,meditative work. The quiltercenters on the regular, rockingmovement of the needle, feelingthe subtle ridges of cotton formunder her fingers. She focuseson her needle, her fingers, herthread, her breathing, and thedetail of her quilt. Quilting istactile, sensual, spiritual work(Elsley 1996: 53).

Henry Lucie-Smith divided thehistory of craft into three stages: thetime when all was craft; the periodfrom the Renaissance to theIndustrial Revolution, when craftbecame differentiated from fine art;and the period since the IndustrialRevolution, during which craftobjects became differentiated fromindustrial products made bymachines (Lucie-Smith 1981: 11).Malcolm McCullough (1996) hassuggested that in the digital era we

should add a new stage to thehistory of craft:

In digital production, craft refersto the condition where peopleapply standard technologicalmeans to unanticipated orindescribable ends. Works ofcomputer animation, geometricmodeling, and spatial databasesget “crafted” when experts uselimited software capacitiesresourcefully, imaginatively, andin compensation for theinadequacies of prepackaged,hard-coded operations . . . Tocraft is to care . . . to craft impliesworking at a personal scale—acting locally in reaction toanonymous, globalized,industrial production(McCullough 1996: 21–2, italicsadded).

Careful eye–hand coordination isimportant in the creation of rainbowart too. Moreover, the players evenoccasionally use the term“handmade:” like some ASCIIartists, rainbow artists sometimesspeak of their creations as“handmade” if “drawn” or evenedited in a word-processingprogram like Notepad, rather thanusing a conversion program thatautomatically transforms aconventional graphic image into atext-based one.27 Most forms ofhandwork involve the use of somekind of tool; ultimately it ismeaningless to ask what is trulymade by hand. What is critical is thematter of control: “Continuouscontrol of process is at the heart oftool usage and craft practice”(McCullough 1996: 66).

In 2001 the Museum ofInternational Folk Art in Santa Fe,

New Mexico, sponsored apioneering exhibition entitled“Cyber Arte: Tradition MeetsTechnology.” The exhibition wasdescribed as containing works oftangible substance by fourcontemporary Hispana/Chicana/Latina artists who combineelements traditionally defined as“folk” with current computertechnology. This was the first publicpresentation by this museum (orany other, as far as I know) ofdigitally produced phenomena thatmuseum staff members called“folk.” Note, however, that in thiscase computers were used to createtangible objects. While thisexhibition was important for settinga precedent—recognition of thepossibility of “folk” art created withcomputers—institutionallegitimation should not be asubstitute for direct evidence aboutthe art itself. This article hasattempted to provide suchevidence.28

Notes1. This article is based on portions

of a manuscript in progress,tentatively titled PixelPatchwork: An Online Folk ArtCommunity and Its Art (Danet inpreparation). For an earlierreport on this topic, seeCyberpl@y: CommunicatingOnline (Danet 2001), Chapter 6,also available online as thesample chapter at the book’scompanion website, http://atar.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberpl@y/. The InternetExplorer version also contains allillustrations; the Netscapeversion is text only.

2. The channel has long had itsown website. In June 2002 a

22 Brenda Danet

previous website was removed,when its webmistress andchannel leader, <patches>, leftIRC. Various versions of thiswebsite, 1998–2002, can still beviewed at the Internet Archive, athttp://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mirc-rainbow.com/.In Fall 2002 a new website wascreated, though still in a ratherpreliminary stage, at http://www.mirc-rainbow.net/index.html.

3. This shareware program wasdeveloped by Khaled Mardam-Bey. See http://www.mirc.co.uk/. Hetransformed a previously text-only program, that had been inexistence since 1988, into aWindows-based one that couldaccommodate use of color,though he did not anticipatethat this would lead to an artform. He merely intended colorto be available to enhance verbaltext.

4. There is no substitute forviewing this phenomenon in realtime online. To do so, downloadand install mIRC for Windowsfrom http://www.mirc.co.uk/ orlinked sites. Once the program isactivated, choose an Undernetserver, and when logged onto it,type /join #mirc_rainbow in themain window.

5. All nicks are presented in anglebrackets, just as they appearonline.

6. For an overview of thesevarieties of text art, togetherwith illustrations, see Danet(2001: 197–207).

7. ASCII is an acronym forAmerican Standard Code forInformation Interchange; itspecified the set of ninety-five

typographic characters than canbe used in plain text across allplatforms online, as in e-mail.An unintended consequence ofdecision-making regarding thisissue is that because thedevelopers of thesetechnologies were largelyAmerican, the code favors thewriting system of English. Onthe history of ASCII art, seeDanet (2001), Chapter 5. Seealso my discussion below aboutthe so-called extended ASCIIcharacters, e.g. those unique tospecific languages and notusable in ordinary e-mail.

8. Images are stored in adatabase, created with aprogram called Image AXS Pro.

9. See http://www.afn.org/~afn39695/veilleux.htm.

10. Stark’s ASCII art gallery is notcurrently accessible, but maystill be viewed at the InternetArchive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/. See also Danet (2001:228–30). Because her work isso often adapted by rainbowartists, many have downloadedher collections for their privateuse, thus relieving them ofdependence on the website.

11. See Glassie (1989); Paine(1990); Pellman (1984); Purdon(1996); von Gwinner (1988).

12. See, e.g. Laurel (1991); McMillan(2002); Rafaeli and Sudweeks(1998); Schultz (2000).

13. “From 1840 to 1875, friendshipquilts were made in staggeringnumbers by a broad crosssection of American women”(Lipsett 1997: 19). See also Clark(1986); von Gwinner (1988:133–9).


14. I am grateful to Brian WellsGalusha, who created the pageat http://www.rootsweb.com/~nycayuga/quilt/#quilt, where Ilearned of this quilt, forproviding the images in Figure 7and for granting permission toreproduce them in this article.For further information, see thisURL.

15. The URL for this webring ishttp://suzieque.net/quiltingcircle.htm. Some digitalquilters are creating secondary“quilts” composed of their ownphotographs. See http://www.grammyj.com/QCOFfriends.html.

16. The site is self-described as“devoted to pushing the limitsof collaborative artwork.” Seehttp://ice.tiles.org/. On earliercomputer underground art, seeDanet (2001: 233–4).

17. Personal e-mail communicationfrom Jon Shirin, 3 January 2003.One can see in Figure 9 wheretiles were still missing, markedby the expression “comingsoon.”

18. If unexpectedly one isdisconnected, images recentlydisplayed remain visible as longas the program is open and thebuffer contains them. The sizeof the buffer can also beincreased beyond the defaultsetting, but it is not infinite.

19. Source: The Grove Dictionary ofArt, http://www.groveart.com/.

20. These are dictionary definitions.21. Figure 4 is an unusually

elaborate example of heraldicsymmetry, a special case ofbilateral or mirror symmetry, inrainbow art. Known fromancient times, in heraldicarrangements, “paired animals

[are] arranged symmetrically toeither side of an interveningcentral element” (Riegl 1992[1893]: 41). Sometimes, pairs ofhuman beings are displayedthis way too. Typically, the headof the animal is portrayedfrontally, while the body isshown in profile, as in Figure 4.My database includes perhapsa dozen examples of simplerheraldic symmetry, just one pairof animals portrayed this way.

22. The mixing of serious andplayful elements is by no meansunique to rainbow art andcommunication, and may beemerging as a feature of onlineritual generally, includingreligious ritual. See Danet (inpress) for a discussion ofrainbow art and communicationas a form of secular, ritualizedplay.

23. ASCII images seemingly “float”in undefined space, and areusually strung together oneafter the other in large files,stored on the Web. See Danet(in preparation), Chapter 4, for adiscussion of the significance ofdemarcation of the surroundingspace in rainbow art.

24. For a fuller exposition of thenotion of good gestalt, seeKreitler and Kreitler (1972),Chapter 4. On gestalt theorygenerally and processes in theperception of art, see Arnheim(1974); Gombrich (1984);Herrnstein-Smith (1968); Koffka(1935); Kohler (1929); Solso(1996), Chapter 4.

25. Members of the “in group,” onthe other hand, hardly need tosweep the cursor over an imageto identify it. They tend to knowand collect each others’ work,

and to recognize the style of theASCII artist whose work hasbeen appropriated.

26. In earlier research I hadidentified only five strategies.See Danet 2001: 258–69 andFigure 6.5.

27. Joan Stark noted on her ASCIIart website that she “draws”her creations by hand, ratherthan using a conversionprogram. Cf. the creations ofAllen Mullen, another ASCIIartist, who openly used such aconversion program extensively,and consequently called them“pictures” rather than “art.”See http://www.inetw.net/~mullen/index.html.

28. Ironically, while the website ofthis museum continues to offeronline versions of past shows ofphysical objects, there wasnever an online version of the“Cyber Arte” exhibit, except fora temporary generalintroduction to it, which is nolonger available. Seehttp://www.moifa.org/.

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