Photorealistic ASCII Art

In the 1960s artists experimented with ASCII art created by a craft process known variously as serigraphy, screen printing, or silk screen printing . For example, a piece called "Aubade" by Alan Riddell from 1969 appears on p. 111 of his book "Typewriter Art" published by London Magazine Editions in 1975, ISBN 0-900626-99-2. This stenciling technique enabled artists to print both regular ASCII characters and their negatives (white on a black background) like this:

Serigraphy enables us to reach levels of contrast that were previously unattainable. For example, the following 256-character wide ladybug uses our old greyscale technique. Mouse over to see the higher-contrast serigraphic image.

Each of the following pairs of images consists of a greyscale photograph and serigraphic ASCII Art at a resolution of 512 characters in width, which is about 7 sheets of typing paper wide. If you had the patience, you could glue together a couple of dozen sheets of typing paper to make an ASCII Art poster that is 5 feet wide and 3.5 feet high. If you stand back, it would be indistinguishable from a photograph.

Don't believe me? Here is what you would see if you used a photo viewer on your computer and zoomed out to simulate viewing from a distance. Can you spot the difference? Which of the following pairs of pictures is ASCII Art? Mouse over each image to see if you are correct. Click on the correct one to see the full-sized serigraphic ASCII Art image.