Characters

CHARACTERS makes large-scale ASCII scrolls from original erotic photographs, printed on deadstock dot-matrix paper at the scale of the body. The process is exact: image to Python script to character grid to continuous-feed paper. The result is a body translated into code and made physical again.

The materials carry a specific history. ASCII and dot-matrix output are the residue of the first networked spaces where gay men built connection under pressure — where desire had to be encoded to travel and identity existed as handle and symbol wherever visibility was dangerous. That history is not cited. It is performed. Drawing on a Caribbean upbringing where these spaces remained urgent survival infrastructure rather than retro-nostalgia, CHARACTERS insists on their ongoing necessity.

The anonymity is part of the same argument — name replaced by handle, body by symbol, presence reduced to managed trace. CHARACTERS follows in the lineage of those first encoded identities, letting the work speak through what it conceals.

Press Kit available for download here.