june 2017 m i s t i g r i s
Memberlistigris:
Greetings, and welcome to the June 2017 Mistigris artpack. Currently
serving: NINE consecutive monthly artpacks with no sign of slowing. Whaa?
Hush, its better you dont ask -- we barely understand ourselves. Now,
purge that grandstanding from your mind and relish in the glory of that
fine ANSI art Mist 2017 logo you see above. A million thanks for that go
to Burps from the recently-revived 90s artgroup Fuel, winner of the 2017
Blender compo. We may be having no problem filling artpacks with outstanding
creative works on a monthly basis, but coming up with our onetime bread and
butter -- the very bones of a PC scene artpack, ANSI/ASCII art logos and
iconography used to give the personal touch to an artgroups infofiles and
FILEID.DIZ -- are quite a bit more difficult to come up with in 2017. But
thanks to guest appearances from our friends, we find a way to keep the old
traditions alive. And for much, much more from Burps, do check out the
Fuel 21 artpack at textmod.es ... it was well worth the wait!
So... what do you need to know about this artpack? IM GLAD YOU ASKED!
While assembling last months, a theme emerged of teletext conversions of
works of fine art. Well, this time around we pulled a 180 degree turn, and
to counter our highbrow affectations four weeks ago, the big popular theme
pervading the computer art collection this time around is... action figures
from the popular Masters of the Universe line. Thats right: for reasons I
cannot adequately explain, we have He-Man all over this artpack. For the
first time in history a single artpack contains multiple renditions of
the heroic character Ram-Man, the thick-helmeted, concussed, head-butting
human battering ram. Why? Basically, there is no good reason, and you
will sprain your thinker if you try to find one: one of our prolific
artists not going to name any names here, but as a side line he also
managed to singlehandedly populate a third of the latest Blocktronics
artpack with Star Wars teletext had laid away a certain stock of MOTU art,
while another sporadic one somehow found his muse locked away inside Castle
Greyskull and tapped into a strange vein of inspiration... it resonates
with me in a strangely specific way, memories of my very first posts on
underground BBSes asking about the peculiar smoothness with which He-Mans
run cycle was animated... but I digress.
As our unnamed prolific artist likes to explore different facets of a theme
before moving on, this artpack also contains smaller bunches of themed art
celebrating Monty Python, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the
Guardians of the Galaxy, and, well, our stable of artists continue
generally to create art on the themes that are of personal interest to
them, which I am pleased to say includes a satisfying quantity of video
game stuffs. Also you see some top-notch works from Illarterates teletext
sub-curation of the recent Glitch art exhibition in Wigan, demonstrating
what is possible when youre brave enough to set a theme and challenge
artists to rise to meet it. And concluding the teletext report, please
note LordNikons first attempt with the medium here in this artpack --
having conquered oldschool ASCII art and typewriter art, theres always
some new novel fad textmode practice to investigate to keep things fresh.
But its hardly fair of me to put words in his mouth!
In addition to a wide array of works by old friends and recent
acquaintances, this artpack also introduces a handful of artists to our
audiences for the very first time! These include Allan Macinnis,
Fugitivephilo, Mr. Biffo, and Maze... some of them we may hopefully see
more from, and many of whom we most likely wont. Also, on a more sober
note, we also bid a fond farewell to Maeve Wolf -- a Mist Classic original
who has been travelling alongside us since our revival in 2014 well nigh
non-stop until ... just this month. Her architectural painting practice,
while fascinating to her old colleagues, has developed to the point where it
has nothing to do with artscene styles -- and her painting career has also
burgeoned to the point where she would prefer to have tighter personal
control over her branding and the representation of her body of work. I
highly recommend you do keep up with her ongoing creative activities at
@dashsharon on Instagram, and... basically am kicking myself for not having
made more extensive use out of her back catalogue of fascinating abstracts
while I had the chance. But no regrets! Without any doubt, we drunk deep,
even if we didnt quite manage to drain the well. Her Modern Mistigris
appearances outweighed her Mist Classic sightings by ... quite a lot.
Our unofficially affiliated Living Closet reunion on May 20th was a small
but inspiring function, involving a dozen or so patrons of the arts and
featuring a number of characters you have grown to know and love from
Mistigris artpacks: visual art, music and literature from Claire Roberts,
the Mythical Man, Creideiki who gets bonus points for improvised
telepoetics, RC Weslowski, and even Cthulu, mediating between the audience
and a text adventure game he wrote. No, not Kithe 14. You will be
hearing more about this one in the weeks to come. In the meantime...
mistigris.org/LC
Breaking developments I learned too late to mention in the last infofile
its ironic: with annual artpacks there was never any point in even trying
to be timely about mentions, but with monthly ones not only are you always
behind the 8-ball of The Next Pack Upcoming, but also you feel, falsely,
that you might be able to tap into everything everyone is doing in every
given 30 day period. Not so, it turns out. -- yesterday well, May 27
bryface tabled for the Vancouver Chipmusic Society at the Vancouver Retro
Gaming Expo with Unicode and base64, doing Gods work of chiptune outreach
to randos including their Learn LSDJ in Fifteen Minutes challenge! with
surprising success. Its a big splash among the like-minded, and more
great bleeps and bloops may be rising to the surface locally because of
it. Which may, in turn, translate to more music in Mist packs --
something Id like to happen again, if somewhat at odds from our present
artpack-y incarnation.
Whos the only one out there hustling as extensively as bryface? I should
disclaim, of course: these side events have no official Mistigris
connection -- Im not trying to take credit for their work, just trying to
spread awareness of their related side-projects. Proceed! Why, that
would be Illarterate of course... due to the relentless pace set by some
anonymous individuals, I cant call him the hardest working man in
teletext, but he certainly seems to be doing more than anyone to get that
great crunchy 3-bit textmode art medium in front of outsiders in public
spaces: a series of workshops and a teletext-themed escape room at Wigan
STEAM will be unfolding over this summer -- its a whole course of events,
running from June all the way through to September, and it would be sheer
folly for me to attempt to encapsulate them all here in this infofile...
but for the full scoop, check out the most recent update at teletextart.co.uk
OK, weve passed 100 lines... it wouldnt be fair to expect anyone to read
beyond this point, so lets wrap it up... we can resume the lectures next
month, same time, same place!
Mistigris 2017: getting out while were ahead!