We went against two years of tradition this month which is both in keeping
with our outsider status in the artscene, and contrary to our autopiloted
curatorial momentum, and instead of making our third annual music-themed
artpack in January just because Blocktronics did one in December of 2017,
visited thanks to the Field of Dreams encouragement of Zeus II an equally
eminently worthy theme that wed never yet devoted an artpack to: the wider
art world, as you might find it represented in museums, galleries and out
back behind them in alleys and underpasses. This might explain Melodias
song Im not sure if the change-of-direction memo made it there, but the
music stays regardless.
After taking 1997-1998 off as a furlong year to focus on failing to
effectively launch my literary career and transition my computer art
collective to the Internet, I enrolled actually, I recall technically Ice
Cream Emperor enrolled me while I was twisting in the torments of option
paralysis in a broad spectrum of classes at a local community college, all
of which I characterised on the echomail networks according to their
potential to kick my arts administration acumen up to the next level. Chief
among these was our shared session of Introduction to Modern Art, which Id
already prepared for in high school by conducting independent studies in
seminal Dada texts. Id enjoyed the luxury of being a well-travelled kid,
and confused one elementary school teacher by sharing my strong and
pretentious opinions about the merits of Paris Centre Pompidou relative to
those of New Yorks Metropolitan Museum. There I wasted my teachers and
fellow students time by approaching the instruction as a species of
contrarian performance art, reproducing Man Rays Object to be Destroyed
and trolling my class by pitching the worthiness of R. Mutts Fountain, as
did Duchamp, on a purely aesthetic basis.
Somehow despite this essential boot camp, Mist foundered and failed. Did I
not write sufficiently passionate futurist manifestos? Nonetheless I sailed
on in the artscene, tapping terrible currents in modern art for the Mistigris
World Tour stop with madASScows The Project and spending a couple of weeks
primarily concerned with discussion of art and other creative activities in
that pilgrimage to the Assembly demoparty with God Among Lice I was going to
write about last summer on its 20th anniversary as the 15th issue of Kithe,
but never managed to make a serious dent in. We made art, not all of which
was sidewalk chalk illustrations of Cookie Monster in German alleyways, and
absorbed as much as we could in our backpacker movements across the continent
-- often finding greater satisfaction out the train windows than on the
museum walls. My peak computer art memory of the whole trip was exploring a
1:1 virtual model of the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art on a big screen in
that same museums basement... it was created as an elaborate Half-Life mod,
and the thrill of fragging headcrabs jumping out from exhibitions wed been
walking past mere moments before can only be imperfectly characterised as
indescribable. I got to enjoy more of it than most of the museum-goers as I
was the only one there conversant in the effective use of mouselook.
In honour of these ancient but unresolved conversations, Im proud to
announce my successful extraction of God Among Lice from retirement on the
occasion of this collection. The dialogue certainly didnt go as it might
well have on IRC 25 years ago:
CthuMist: whazzup homeboy, where did we leave off? the art fans are howling
for blood, I need you to fuck them up
LgIoCdE: damn holmes, I got masterpieces for days. You still releasing
RIPscrips?
While chasing the fading artscene thrill, I took up partial duties split
among a collective of 20 running and curating an art gallery starting in
2003. I pitched computer art exhibitions to my colleagues, but every time
they posed me the same halt-in-my-tracks question: how do we make money
selling that? Well, its a valid question. Please let me know if anyone
ever figured it out!
I lost track of new trends in contemporary art, but I never lost the beat of
my teenaged computer art pursuits at least to the extent that I ever felt
that pulse consensus is that my experience was very non-representative. So
five years ago I resumed my involvement in the sharing of computer art --
what was the first time around for me a contemporary wave, now vintage and
retro. I dont even know whats been going on out there in the wider world
of small pixels. A couple of years ago my wifes ebay shop sold a back issue
of Mad Magazine to the Piss Christ artist. Thats a great metaphor for how
un-plugged in I am!
But it doesnt matter. We cast a wide net. The history of art, here at a
glance. From antiquity to the Renaissance to Dutch Masters, Impressionism,
Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art... we survey the entire landscape up to and
including developments unfolding as recently as last month. Surely no one
will be familiar with all the points our crew have referenced, but hopefully
it will serve as an interesting road map for rewarding further investigations!
A special tip of the hat to new artists making their artscene debut in this
months collection, guest contributions from the Japanese pixel artist
Minediru and the Danish teletext enthusiast TekstTV. Also, a big hats off to
Picrotoxin for making good on what we should have done a long time ago and
hosting some collaborative networked Mistigris ANSI art Moebius sessions,
yielding a couple of very worthwhile certainly Mistigris-exceptional pieces
that would not otherwise exist, including the wild Keith Haring jam acting as
the introduction to this infofile, featuring Picrotoxin, Zeus II, Illarterate
in his first attempt at ANSI art and a guest logo by Arlequin in his Mistigris
artpack debut! And another big thanks to Whazzit for the FILEID.DIZ!
Februarys artpack will inevitably contain a certain quantity of art on those
perennial seasonal topics of love and lust, but will also be an open call
for unthemed art. I dont know if we can reasonably pull it off, but March
were going to take another crack at an IWD special, so heres an early
warning for all the ladies out there. We didnt get any Guerrilla Girls in
here this month, but we can still strive to put into practice what we learned
from them.