mistigris
nov 2018
XXIV annis
artpack contributors:
8bitbaba is an accomplished South Asian graphic designer with a side line in
minimalist pixel art, which he paints on canvases as well as screens.
instagram.com/8bitbaba
8bitpoet comes by his small-scale pixelart virtuosity by genuinely oldschool
means, in a former life the late 90s designing Macintosh program icons as
Doc Halpern of Mad Science Laboratories. He is a co-founder of the Dead Pixel
Society.
instagram.com/8bitpoet / thedeadpixelsociety.net
192.168.10.13 occupies a rarefied echelon of glitch production, like a tree
that drops apparently effortless scrambled fruit at peak ripeness.
1013.wtf
Yet another tireless participant of the UKs teletext renaissance, it seems
almost inevitable that we would provide a home for Alistair ZXGuesser Crees
playful screens beneath our umbrella.
twitter.com/zxguesser
Lithuanian games programmer Andrey Fomin is greatly enamoured of the visual
aesthetic of ASCII art stickmen and machinery, leaning heavily on it to lend
some distinguishing novelty to his game Proto Raider and his upcoming oeuvre
ASCIIdent.
protoraider.com/puzzlelab.html
apam is the author of the Magicka BBS software and a bunch of open-source BBS
doors, and if he has to draw the ANSI art himself to sell you on them, hes
game.
github.com/apamment / magickabbs.com
Artist, gamer, scientist... not necessarily in that order, BhaalSpawn is
principally a graphite pencil artist, drawing for employers and smaller
clients, but outside of the day job, has a love of science, sci-fi, fantasy and
computer games. When relaxing, like most people they want to avoid work, but...
still have a love of art. As for the particular mechanics of the gamerhaikus
series: I write the haiku as a note, then take a screen shot, turning it into
a picture. I crop it. Then you can draw on the picture with the markup tool in
the iPhone pictures app! You get about 8 colours and 3 pen sizes and poke
away...
etsy.com/uk/shop/YavinPaints / twitter.com/BhaalSpawn
Mike Blippypixel Rose is a digital artist whose tastes veer toward the
vintage in electronic music and visuals, dabbling in low-poly 3D modeling,
LED pixelart, and teletext as well as work in the distinctive palette of the
BBC Micro.
instagram.com/blippypixel
Brad Bonemouse Morris has clearly kept his pen sharp in the many long years
since contributing to Dream Factory and Cthulus high school newspaper.
instagram.com/bonemouse
Crafter BrownPaperCowgirl is only a computer artist in an historical context,
sharing with us a couple of ASCII art type-in selections from her family Sanyo
MBC-550 circa 1983.
instagram.com/brownpapercowgirl
A scout from the textmode Yanomami at the 8bitMUSH at ansiart.com, cccfires
burgeoning ANSI works increasingly involve exploring fine typographical
details beyond the point of distorting abstraction.
Periodically we enounter someone who is not only a specialist in a given
medium, but who also focuses on a specific theme to the exclusion of all
others. Chuppixel is the worlds preeminent Tiny Towers-style pixelart movie
cast group shot specialist - but as you can see, they are trying to branch out.
instagram.com/chuppixel / chuppixel.tumblr.com
Cranksy previously known as Troll has been watching from the sidelines for a
good long while, and has recently felt moved to finally rejoin the fellowship
of underground computer art with some vigour and urgency. A recent composition
is joined by a couple of vintage tracks this month.
A poet of extremes who can mean love when he says death and death when he
says love, our beloved ragman Crowkeeper has voluntarily toiled beneath
minimalist constraints so severe that Twitters word limit is as nothing to
him. In 2015 Mistigris digitally reprinted his 1999 collection Scarecrow
Poetics, but he is even more active writing today -- edging out Horsenburger
as our most prolific contributor of all time!
twitter.com/crowkeep
Daniel Wickert is a multidisciplinary visual artist who works in a variety
of mediums including painting, collage, ceramics, sculpture, photography and
mixed media. He has recently discovered exciting creative possibilities in
physical pixelart manifest in reality in the Lego medium.
A man of the world, Dubaiwalla has decided to pay closer attention to the
endless buffet served up to his eyes and take up photography. We highlight the
more mathematically-intriguing architectural side of his portfolio.
instagram.com/dubaiwalla / hooloovoo.aminus3.com
In over 20 years on the arts culture beat, Freelance Pete aka Peter
Guindon is arguably the most unrecognized genius I have yet come across.
Illustration, 2D animation, and heartbreaking ukulele ballads for the
underemployed generation. If you dont blink, you can see his handiwork in
Ripping Friends, Busytown Mysteries, Lalaloopsy, and Simpsons Tapped Out.
pguindon.blogspot.com
Know someone for a decade or so, perform at their wedding, and they still
might come up with some surprises for you. Front-end web developer Garann
also, it turns out, has a side line in fashion illustration! Which is, like,
committing the same crimes as Image Comics, but in the service of truth and
beauty!
instagram.com/garannillos
Scene dudes are embedded all over the tech sector -- and it turns out that in
Scandinavian games development theyre basically impossible to avoid. Grobo
recently briefly ducked out of deep cover to share with us an ANSI art
celebration of a title recently published by his employer, Starbreeze Studios.
instagram.com/andtheniwasabeard
A genuine professional teletext illustrator two decades hence, Steve
Horsenburger Horsley has recently returned to the game for love of the art:
Its kind of frustrating to discover you are good at something only to
realise its pointless in todays world, but I just really like doing it so I
am going to carry on. We feel your pain, Steve! At his website you can
commission original teletext creations from him, so dont delay to get your
own piece of textmode art history!
horsenburger.com
Dan Illarterate Farrimond is a multimedia artist from Wigan, UK. Despite
attempts to modernise, he will forever be known as That Guy That Does Teletext
Art. But whoever said thats a bad thing?
twitter.com/illarterate / teletextart.tumblr.com
danfarrimond.co.uk / portfolio.illarterate.co.uk
Jamie Graham has a typewriter with a red ink ribbon, and hes not afraid to
prove it.
instagram.com/jamiegraham93
Every medium has several modes: a pre-modern approach, a clean modern
style, and a post-modern detournement, often in the glitch idiom. In
Jellica Jake, teletext has found its glitch ma/onster! It is such a simple
3-bit medium there quite simply isnt the complexity needed for things to go
really wrong, but somehow this artist, doing more with less, has found depths
of texture to imply psychological profundity between the lines.
twitter.com/jellicajake / instagram.com/jellica / kittenrock.co.uk
Kazunari Kalcha Naito represents the tip of an iceberg we know little of and
understand still less of -- Japans ShiftJIS parallel textmode art scene. His
works are informed by his interests in 70s prog rock, jazz, and fine art.
LambdaCalculus digs deep into the vault to share with us a piece of PD ANSI art
promotion for a vaporware product. Vaporware: its just one letter away from
v a p o r w a v e !
twitter.com/lambdacalculus
You wont see any of Mavriks creative work in this archive, but theres a very
good chance that the collection will have passed through his graciously-offered
web hosting at mistigris.org en route to you, picking up from his historical
facilitator role greasing the gears of Mists KiTSCHNet echomail network from
its home at Daemons Gate BBS.
daemonsgate.com
Max Mouse, mysterious denizen of our home area code of 604, has found his way
-- once again -- back to BBSes and ANSI art after a long time soaking up the
rays of enlightment.
twitter.com/MaxMouse
Mentalpop is a Toronto-based pixelartist who works in collaboration with indie
game development teams and streams their creation sessions for Patreon
supporters.
mentalpop.ca
A veritable patron of the arts, Morgan Lee, longtime Mistigris textile
consultant, has continued apace in her mission of needlepoint pixelart
cartography. While textile work falls outside the traditional confines of
the underground computer artscene, really -- as the original pixelart artform
and indeed the original computer artform -- it has more similarities than
dissimilarities with the work we do, so we are happy to continue championing
it.
instagram.com/morganleemcpherson
mylifecomputerized explores the imposition of the aesthetics of vintage
computing specifically, the IBM PC CGA palette to help make sense of our
postmodern era.
instagram.com/mylifecomputerized
The man, the myth... Mythical Man handily satisfies both categories. Long
known for his prowess on the euphonium, visual art is a relatively recent
development to which he has applied himself ardently.
euphoniousmyth.tumblr.com / instagram.com/themythicalman
Nail has been known for stacking blocks for Fire and The Legion in the past,
and, since his return to the scene, is doing the very same with old friends in
Blocktronics. Deeply rooted in the 16-color world of the Commodore 64, hes
also been instrumental in bringing the Galza PETSCII art packs to the attention
of its native platforms scene.
twitter.com/nail7 / instagram.com/sevendxs
Italian net.artist Nbreakfast thinks nothing of hacking a game ROM or patching
in an obscenity to a breadboard to get his idea across.
ngirotti.com
Nelumbotus is a major in computer science with a minor in pixelart. No, not
really, but yes.
instagram.com/nelumbotus
Nick Lakowski is a Vancouver based artist. He holds a BFA in studio art from
Emily Carr University 2004 and an MFA in studio art from the University of
British Columbia 2012. His work is grounded in a commitment to grassroots
community projects, including experience as a teacher, muralist, volunteer,
board member, curator, and events facilitator for a variety of local schools,
businesses, festivals, DIY art spaces, and artist-run galleries. His current
work with acrylics draws anxiously and humorously from the overly
deterministic discipline of neurobiology, the world of commercial painting
and paint manufacturing, various indexes and orders of colour, the redactive
procedure of painting itself, and a mystical hysteria towards resuscitation
and intensive care medicine.
nlakowski.tumblr.com / iheartlocalart.ca/artists-2/nick-lakowski
Pinguino grew up on the Internet, doing telco for CiA, and VGA for GAS and
Rival. Lately, she runs the design studio Pinguhaus, goes raving on every
continent, and experiments with obscure foods -- her latest accomplishment is
making ramen noodles out of crickets. The design co-founder of the Cuddli
geek dating app, her next project is partying with sled dogs in Greenland.
ivomitrainbows.co / twitter.com/pinguino
PiquANSI sporadically draws elaborate boxological mandalas in Rexpaint and it
is our pleasure to periodically share them with you.
@piquansi
Pixel Art For The Heart paints landscapes in pixelart, but always adjusts the
dramatic slider well beyond recommended settings.
jonathanrawlings.com
Lest we take our practice too seriously, PixelFart is here to keep things
loose and casual.
instagram.com/pixelfart
Polyducks Ben Jones is an artist and web game programmer living in greater
Manchester, UK. His interests are in tile-based, PETSCII and pixel artwork
using limited palettes. Often presents his bio in the third person.
pixeljoint.com/p/125346.htm / polyducks.co.uk / twitter.com/polyducks
Publius Emeritus II is a onetime Mist member who isnt hiding that effectively.
An Amiga .MOD-tracker hero formerly of EuphoniX, having worked his way
through more than a few game development studios in the meantime Redeye at
one time aka Marauder re-appears in Mistigris as a cultivator of abstract
themes in photography.
instagram.com/redeyephoto
Sassafras, our primary gateway to the FANSI world of the 8bitMUSH, makes their
second appearance in a Mistigris artpack with this trademark Mistigris outsider
entry from this years ANSI art competition at the LayerOne demoparty.
ansiart.com/Info/Artist/Sassafras
Straddling the interdimensional realms of pixelart and voxelart, Brazilian game
developer Scofanogd shares more of his more sedate whimsical experiments with
us.
instagram.com/scofanogd / scofano.com.br
Founder of EuphoniX, Sentience has given the music a rest and is resuming his
explorations into every other creative medium.
Sure, everyone loves our social media channel, but Simon Schaffert binged all
2500 posts end to end, giving a thumbs up to choice selections on average
every 15 seconds for hours. You dont see the oldschool sensibility actively
manifesting in much of his own design work, but it lays hidden, waiting to
strike!
instagram.com/simonschaffert
Snake PETsken fell in love with Commodore computers when he was 8... 36 years
ago... and tries to keep the same wonder and passion from when he was a kid,
starting to grasp the fundamentals of coding. His modern graphite portrait
practice must have somehow influenced his PETSCII style, driving him to try to
get the most out of every single character cell. The only software he uses is
Petmate, a nice PETSCII editor.
instagram.com/snakepetsken
Ed Starstew Stastny is that rare synthesis suggested in the two-word phrase
computer artist, practicing a species of net.art at SITO continually since
even prior to the establishment of Mistigris. Having mastered and
subsequently discarded so many styles and approaches, wearing the masks of a
half-dozen faux handles he could easily masquerade as an entire artgroup. Or
has he in fact been doing this... all along?
instagram.com/starstew / starstew.tumblr.com
Stephan Rewind Bellin has a practice of making pixelart portraits of
characters from the silver screen at their most iconic, with aspirations to
include them as characters in a game taking place in a mash-up world containing
all movie settings simultaneously. Following him on social media is like
getting a free master class in film studies.
instagram.com/stephanrewind / twitch.com/stephanrewind
Carl TeletextR Attrill represents Mistigris continuing wave of
introducing the great public textmode art tradition -- teletext -- to the
underground computer artscene.
teletextr.blogspot.com / twitter.com/thatotherCarl
Every time I include her in an artpack, I find myself completely rewriting
Theresa Oborns bio, as though I might somehow hew closer to the truth, like
a darts player hoping to hit a bullseye. She draws and sculpts, and perhaps
the work speaks for itself.
theresaoborn.com
Textmode experimenter t1po has it backwards, bringing computer art
sensibilities to typewriters and typewriter sensibilities to computers.
Failing to cross the streams wouldnt yield anything extraordinary, while going
contrariwise both ways makes strange magic emerge from the dullest artifacts of
the mundane. Nice trick!
instagram.com/ty.p0 / t1po.tumblr.com
First exposed to Teletex back in the late 80s spending 2 years making
teletex style pages with ViewData as part of schol IT reading the
adventures of Turner the Worm and Bamboozle on Channel 4 teletex,
apparently TitaniumDave works in the games industry -- though his interest in
Teletex was re-ignited by the sadly-missed Feb 2017 Block Party in Cambridge.
Uglifruit is the alter-ego of Andy Jenkinson. Andy is quite tall does things
with music. Andy on occasion feels the need to express himself elsewhere.
andyjenkinson.com / twitter.com/andyuglifruit
dawdler and doodler. everyone is an artist nowadays. but Unseen Fate aka
Antti Minkkinen is an ANSI artist. that said, enjoy the painting! finland.
iconosquare.com/minkant
upper.case: storytelling pixelartist or pixel-illustrating storyteller? Why
not both?
instagram.com/upper.case
A 16-bit guy in a 64-bit world, VileR grew up when baud rates were lower and
signal/noise ratios higher. A bizarre pixelling accident in the mid-90s left
him trapped in an artistic timewarp bubble somewhere on the inert fringes of
the demo-/artscene. However, he was recently seen crawling out of the woodwork
and into projects such as the 8088 MPH demo, and may occasionally be observed
busying himself with nameless and unspeakable oldskool-related machinations.
8088mph.blogspot.com
Webersso.n brings about a deft marriage of subject and audience, initially
making hyperstylized perler bead portraits of an endless series of women before
branching out into pixelated still lives with fauvist pop art colour schemes.
instagram.com/webersso.n
From Twilight, the Legion, Avenge, Fire, Fuel and through to Blocktronics, the
Swede known as Zeus II is a one-man ANSI art industry.
twitter.com/ZeusII
MISTIGRIS DISTRIBUTION SITES:
telnet://bbs.inktwo.com:23
telnet://guardian.synchro.net
bbs.nz
16colo.rs
pc.textmod.es/crew/mistigris
artpacks.org
mistigris.org
instagram.com/mistfunk
twitter.com/mistfunk
tumblr.com/mistfunk
and our usual round of greetz to our colleagues at: 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!