I started to learn the program through various YouTube tutorials and archives that p5.js has uploaded on their website.

Then, I started to try the actual coding.

At the beginning, I did not fully understand how to upload an image and translate it into ASCII using code. Instead, I manually typed each ASCII character line by line:

As a result, the image began to appear not only in the preview window, but also as text within the code editor itself.

To support this process, I created my own system with two methods:

1. either completing a section before checking accuracy, or repeatedly testing the code in smaller increments.
2. In both cases, I compared the output against the reference image and physically marked my progress.

After entering the code, I scribbled red lines over the reference image displayed in the adjacent window to mark what I had just typed.

Without realising it, I was approaching the web software in a highly human-centred way. Instead of instructing the computer to position each letter, I was trying to control the placement myself.

Knowledge gained at this stage

I inserted the fully hand-typed ASCII code into CSS and HTML environments to observe how the same instructions would behave across different systems. Although the code remained technically identical, the visual outcome changed: characters that appeared yellow in JavaScript were rendered in different colours in CSS/HTML, altering the tonal values of the cow image. Certain symbols, such as @ and #, suddenly became highlighted by the syntax rules of the browser.

This revealed that the image was not only produced by my input, but also by the interpretation rules of each software environment. The “image” therefore did not exist as a fixed visual object, but as a negotiated result between instructions and platform.

I also discovered that when writing // as a comment in JavaScript, the notes were not applied to the preview window. The system recognised the line as instruction about the code rather than instruction for the image. This exposed a hierarchy inside the language: some text participates in image production, while other text exists only as meta-communication between human and machine.

Through this, I began to understand that coding is not simply a neutral tool for drawing. It is a conditional system that filters, prioritises, and interprets information. My earlier attempt to manually control every character conflicted with the nature of the medium — the computer does not execute intention, only rules.

When I manually typed the ASCII characters and pressed the play button, the image appeared not only in the preview window but also inside the console text output. However, whenever the code contained an error, red underlines appeared and warning messages were generated in the console. The system followed a clear chain of behaviour: an error in the coding window → a warning message in the console → the program refused to run.

Multiple instances work together:

The interface is divided into functional zones: the sketch.js editor performs the act of making, the preview window performs the act of seeing, and the console performs the act of communicating. These separate instances interact and together produce an emergent outcome.

the code itself,

comments,

console feedback,

and the visual output.

Together, these form an emergent system. I began to think of p5.js less like a static tool, and more like a living organism.

However, When I manually typed ASCII characters to recreate the same image multiple times, I received feedback that this approach was not considered “proper coding,” as it lacked automation.  I began restudying the fundamental functionality of p5.js, focusing on how the system operates, and then moved on to creative coding studies.

I then uploaded the original image itself and translated its pixel data into ASCII characters. Instead of manually placing each symbol, the computer analysed brightness values and assigned characters accordingly.

While working through these different approaches, I began to question what coding actually means. I decided to explore this concept further for the upcoming weeks.

In Violent Phenomena (Barokka, 2022), Khairani Barokka critiques how certain bodies, experiences, and forms of communication are marginalised through translation’s politics of access and refusal. Her concept of “right of refusal” reveals how silence, hesitation, and the unspoken are not neutral absences, but embodied forms of power that structure who is allowed to speak—and who is not. Using Barokka’s framework as a method of re-presentation, I re-translate the Preface of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1947), which recounts translator Barbara Wright’s polite but uneasy conversations about her work.

In this re-presentation, I adopt “Translating Absence” as a technique: the process of taking the unspoken, judgmental silence—the “Ah-,” pauses, hesitations, and polite micro-violences embedded in everyday conversation—and rendering them explicitly visible. These translated absences appear as Intrusive Annotations in the form of footnotes, exposing the prejudices, micro-aggressions, and social hierarchies that silently structure the original dialogue. In doing so, the project aligns with Barokka’s insistence that translation must account for what is withheld as much as for what is spoken.

Footnotes, by their very position at the margins of the page, visually and conceptually embody the mechanics of exclusion. They represent information deemed necessary yet structurally secondary—mirroring the way unspoken judgments and social biases remain present but unacknowledged in everyday interaction. In this piece, the intrusive annotations transform casual dialogue into a layered commentary, revealing the micro-aggressions beneath the surface of polite exchange.

By framing these internal, judgmental thoughts as annotations, the work foregrounds the politics of silence and absence that Barokka identifies. The footnotes do not simply clarify the text; they interrupt it. They refuse the smoothness of politeness and instead foreground the embodied tensions that constitute communication. Through this method, the project demonstrates that translating absence is not a subtractive act but a critical one—making visible the unsaid structures of power that shape how we read, listen, and understand.

In mathematics, i  marks a position within order—a discrete index used to locate, count, and totalise difference. In a colonial context, this logic became a tool of power: each i  transformed into a racial type, each xᵢ  a quantified body.

To index was to translate life into data, to render the ungovernable legible to empire. Benedict Anderson’s “Census” from Imagined Communities (1983) describes how colonial administrations used enumeration to imagine a knowable population. Through the act of counting, they created both the illusion of completeness and the authority to define what could be counted.

My response takes the form of a detailed, critical Inventory—a document of administrative creation that simultaneously defines and critiques the structure of colonial knowledge. I adopted the persona of a colonial administrator, mimicking the mathematical and legalistic precision seen in the “Identity Index” image, but subverting it to expose the system’s foundational fiction.

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Bibliography:

Anderson, Benedict., 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London, UNITED KINGDOM.