mistigris
august 2018
The tallying is wrapped, and now I can confidently announce that I have all of
the numbers... by which I mean to say that weve just about arrived at the
conclusion of our data analysis of nearly 24 years worth of Mistigris
releases, including over 7500 individual artworks a bit shy of one piece
daily over that period, which in reality saw 16 years of what was effectively
torpor in the middle. This is granting us an unprecedented big picture
view into our activities and wider trends informing them. Most active
Mistigris contributor of all time? Crowkeeper! And believe it or not, the
gap between him and Horsenburger is widening! But to be fair, he did have a
22-year head start... though granted he only contributed 34 items in that
period.
The problem with having all of the numbers is that as you have just seen I
cant yet find a way of making any of it interesting to anyone other than
myself... but it has been very effective at using objective, uncaring metrics
to rewrite the Mistigris oral history, building up quiet individuals who
actually consistently contributed art to artpacks over people who made a big
impression on the echomail networks and IRC channels but didnt in fact
manifest much in our main activity, the compilation and distribution of
artpacks. Big personalities are useful in establishing a community, but there
are no artpacks without any art.
One of the most heartening trends emerging from the data and a helpful segue
bridging our accidental blind stumbling into actual useful and interesting
newsletter content is the indication that many of our most prolific and
consistent contributors of all time are newcomers from our post-revival
period, an indication that despite neurotic nostalgia to the contrary, our
best days may not necessarily be behind us!
And so welcome to our August artpack, four paragraphs in. Weve been
releasing these monthly for nearly two years now, experimenting with curating
themed vs. unthemed collections, which both have their strengths and
weaknesses. This months is another free play pack with no overarching
theme running through the submissions. There are, however, plenty of
sub-themes among individuals contributions: this time around we are sharing a
subset of Alistair Crees teletext vehicle collection you should see his
teletext garage, the conclusion of BhaalSpawns Gaminghaikus series which
we started running one year ago hopefully this doesnt mark the end of
BhaalSpawns appearances in our collections, as the poetry was secretly a
Trojan horse insinuating us closer to the true treasure of their visual art
by which I mean to say no, the real treasure wasnt our friendship all
along, Horsenburgers teletext portraits of comedians difficult to place
otherwise in our rigorous filing of art into themes such as television, film,
video games, fine art, world history, etc., Jamie Grahams typewritten
travelogues does that make his pieces TTY art? Sadly no, but nice try!,
Kalchas ShiftJIS explorations into the realm of French poetry oh, that old
cliche!, and the Mythical Mans round works. You know, theyre, uh,
round. At least, the ones were including this month are.
But lest I run the risk of giving our regulars all of the acclaim or worse
yet, leaving all the LJN for the greenhorns!, allow me to sprinkle a bit of
acclaim, remember? Perhaps best not to ask just how one sprinkles such a
thing, the mental images are a real roller-coaster ride on the artists making
their artpack debuts here this month: let us welcome composer Antriksh Bali,
nerd LambdaCalculus thats not what hes doing for us -- ahem, that position
has already been filled -- it just seems a handy way of summing up his
projects outside of Mist 8, RexPaint textmode recluse PiquANSI and pixelart
storyteller upper.case!
And finally, a big thanks to Nail, who despite great disagreements with our
curatorial direction nonetheless voluntarily emerged to externally satisfy one
of our very few existential artpack requirements -- FILEID.DIZ ASCII art
labels -- and then sat by, baffled and bewildered, as we stubbornly banked
them rather than putting them to use. Not only that, he also graciously
coloured this packs DIZ for the infofiles instead of our previous practice of
getting blind monkeys in boxing gloves to spice them up with a little spot
colour -- you can really see the difference you get when you use an artist and
take the boxing gloves off. Ironically, ldb gets a big kick out of the
pugilist ape colour treatment, as you can see below in a garish desert ASCII
art scene in deference to the heat wave kicking our PNW butts at this moment
in time. Different oats for different goats!
Of course, all this idle chatter about colouring ASCII art is moot in this,
the uncoloured ASCII version of the infofile.
In conclusion, thanks for sharing your eyeballs with us on this computer art
adventure, and please dont forget that were always on the prowl for more
goodies not just FILEID.DIZ files, but definitely those also to throw in
the next collection and hype up on social media. And locals? Dont miss out
on the Square Rave Angura / Vancouver Chipmusic Society coproduction coming up
Aug 25th at the Red Gate at the old Video In site, featuring performances by
locals and visiting Japanese chiptune royalty: suesett, Ca5, east breaks in
thousand, boaconstructor, Freaky DNA, bryface, Hitori Tori, lootcanal and
C130. Thats good value for 15, especially when you compare it to the cost
of airfare to Japan!
Greets to: fuel.wtf, blocktronics.org, impure.nl, amish.0w.nz, galza.org, Fire
Dream, Break, pungas.space, paleotronic.com, soundcloud.com/bitcouver,
vanchipmusic.ca, and TABNet!
Mistigris 2018: our best days may not necessarily be behind us!
o o ,
ldb