# 1970 as ASCII

> Asked to fine-tune the first three eras, the build redesigned them. 1970 became an eye made of typed characters. It was more 1970 and much less of an eye.

- URL: https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-as-ascii
- Kind: Dead end
- Made: 20 Oct 2026
- Author: Arun Kumaar Sreenivasan
- Part of: How this was made (https://www.kiruk.in/making)
- Agent file: https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-as-ascii/agent.md

## What was asked

"Fine-tune the era looks, starting with 1970, 1981 and 1991."

## What was built

Redesigns. 1970 was redrawn as rows of dot-matrix characters, the way a terminal would print a picture. 1981 was put inside an early window.

> it just misses so much detail… changed the entire vibe… all the things have already been used
>
> Arun, reviewing the three redesigns

All three were reverted.

## What it taught

Two rules came out of this round.

The first is about the work: [the whole face stays visible](https://www.kiruk.in/making/whole-face). A terminal's characters are too coarse to hold a lash or a pore, so a face drawn in them stops being a face.

The second is about the process. "Fine-tune" is not permission to redesign. A look that has been signed off keeps its medium and all of its detail unless the change is named.

[The 1970 that shipped](https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-phosphor) keeps the phosphor and loses nothing.

## Lineage

### Led to

- [The whole face, always](https://www.kiruk.in/making/whole-face) (Principle, 21 Oct 2026): Brow hairs, pores, lid folds, lashes, iris fibres and the page in the cornea stay visible at rest in every era. Anything that hides the face may appear only inside a cut.

### Cut for

- [1970, phosphor](https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-phosphor) (Interface, Oct 2026): The first of the ten ways of seeing. A green tube is the only light in the room, the picture is drawn in glowing cells, and a block cursor waits in the pupil. Every other era was built to match what this one got right.