Star Dot Star is a collection of character-based art and design spanning about 155 years. Think typewriter art, teleprinter / RTTY art, ASCII, and concrete poetry. Reflecting various technological advancements and cultural contexts, these genres reference prior arts like needlepoint and cross stitch; or perhaps calligrams found in the 9th century Aratea.

Light exhibits the properties of both particle and wave; we think of drawing as being similar—dot and line/fill. Here, what separates many of these works from say, Pointillism, is an underlying structural logic with roots in the earliest known mosaics (Mesopotamia; second half of 3rd millennium BC). What of the constellations?

This collection is also, truth be told, born from a bit of that ol’ toxic impulse, nostalgia. We recall the BBS-era of the 1990s and years prior; text-based games and Razor1911 .nfo files. Back then, when you wanted to view all the files in a DOS directory, you’d type in *.* (star, dot, star)—hence the collection’s title. However, ASCII is still modern; it’s still evolving.

Anyhow it seems we’ve gone a bit overboard and are now home to some pretty spectacular works including the first edition of Julius Nelson’s Artyping (1939), a plethora of Snoopy prints from the 70s, a Ken Knowlton work in dominos, and more. Enjoy!