ZII
Only making our second release of the year as we approach its midpoint -- the
same number of releases we dropped on December 31st of last year! -- the
longer we spend making computer art, the faster and faster nearly everything
around us seems to move, and the slower and slower we seem to. I would be
moved to make some pithy observation about special relativity were the rest of
our community not also moving at our languid pace, suggesting that the realm
of retrocomputing, on a journey in this time capsule along with us, is
continuing at one speed along one trajectory, even as the rest of the world
spirals away into chaos and disruption. Or, otherwise put: our controls are
locked in to 1994, while outside this sphere things seem to be plotting a
course for 1942. Maybe sometime soon well feature our first artworks
designed for Bombe machines and Colossus computers!
As is customary, we like to look back toward the canon of uchronia or
alternate histories to see how this year measures up to the speculation by
decades of writers, and ... well, it could be better and it could be worse.
In any event, we are definitely drifting into the realm of b-list speculative
futures: not many people cared all that much about the year 2025 at least,
not outside of Asia, the highest-profile of which is probably the book The
Running Man... not a variety of Futuresport that were watching quite yet,
something to be thankful for. Titles such as Twilights Last Gleaming, A
Friend of the Earth, and The Lake At The End Of The World dont beggar the
imagination, but its not yet too late to change the path to them. It looks
like we did manage to duck the bullet leading to The Peshawar Lancers, but all
the same why couldnt get a future-present thats just kind of fun, you know,
like Segagaga? In conclusion, here in the year of the inescapable AI, perhaps
Spike Jonzes Her is the best fit for our current stop on the death spiral.
On that happy note, we change our focus to the contents of this artpack. It
feels like every year now, were emphasising how diminished a role the Star
Wars franchise is playing no one took my Wheres all the Andor fanart? bait
from a year ago -- its not yet entirely absent from this milieu but it
definitely is now just another colour in the SF spectrum along with Star Trek,
Babylon 5, Judge Dredd, 2001 and Ghost in the Shell.
For starters, I should draw your attention to AtonalOspreys modelbots series,
inspired by impossible scantily-clad inventions he keeps being contacted by on
social media. Less SF than contemporary slop, but truly we are living in a
dystopia and here in cyberspace we have front row seats! This artpack
includes a couple of artworks drawn for demoparties, including one from Zeus
II among many other ANSI illustrations here for Horizon BBS, which placed
10th in last years Evoke ANSI compo, and a very recent joint by Kirkman and
LDA drawn with the unfulfilled intention of competing in LayerOnes ANSI
compo last week. Undoubtedly MC Freshers Unicode work in Durdraw will catch
your attention were just priming the pump here for next months unthemed
collection, which will feature quite a bit more of his distinctive work, and
The Green Herring demonstrates the triumph of the human imagination over
genAI by bringing you along on a journey of pulling polished, finished
screens out of a trio of random shapes and squiggles.
Wed like to give a warm welcome to y4my4m, whose Blender experiment looked
enough like a movie poster that he decided to mock it up in full. All that
can be found here plus distinctive work by esteemed guests and regular
contributors 2Stoned, Blippypixel, Codefenix, Consolejockey, Darkman
Almighty, Discgator, Hortau, ldb, Nick Lakowski, Nitron, Nouscentric and
Teletextr! A big thanks to Zeus II for furnishing this artpack with all of its
livery the FILEID.DIZ and that gorgeous logo atop this infofile, and to you
fine folks for choosing to spend a little of your screen time with us. Stay
tuned for another artpack out of us next month which really isnt as far away
as it sounds, where anything goes!