Mistigris 25th ANSi ART by j33p33 2019
m e m b e r l i s t i g r i s
Better a 1bitwonder than a 1 hit wonder. The visual artist Nick Seriatum
Williams works in other styles, but in monochrome pixelart he f l i e s .
instagram.com/1bitwonder
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
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
I can think of no other pixel artist whose oeuvre is so concerned with the
interplay of shadows and light in darkened environments. A Flamingo Cups
work isnt a style, but a mood.
instagram.com/aflamingocup
General Mikes visual vanguard of the Army of 2600, Atari Stash House,
experiments endlessly with rastered sprites, yielding results that are
always fascinating and oddly familiar.
instagram.com/ataristashhouse
Axl is a Parisian artist who works in many styles but who has recently
stumbled upon the Commodore 64s PETSCII aesthetic and is currently feverishly
working every angle of it, machine-generated and bespoke.
instagram.com/axltm
There are weird colours that sometimes yield each other when mixed in
different proportions. Banzo9420 arrived at ANSI art by way of graffiti
with a hint of demoscene.
instagram.com/banzo9420
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
Billy Stoughton II finally makes good on an aspiration weve held since
Mistigris revived five years ago, of abusing Minecraft as a pixel art
medium, as demonstrated on contemporary Mistigris and Mist Classic textmode
art compositions on massive landscape art scales. The included works were
prepared using ClassiCube.
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
A more focused student of the Commodore 64 aesthetic you will not find. Cal
Skuthorpe made a splash invading Twitter with @PETSCIIbots, but that is only
the first stage of his nefarious scheme for world domination.
twitter.com/buzzclik / petscii.tumblr.com
C0unt WAVnstein is an audio engineer and retro computer enthusaist who grew up
with the Commodore range of computers, starting with the PET. He loves
combining old school and modern technologies in creative endeavours.
instagram.com/rokkuongakuka
Periodically we encounter 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.
instagram.com/chuppixel / chuppixel.tumblr.com
CoaXCable of CoolPHat is getting a little more comfortable with lending us
guest appearances, putting his own twist on an art template we explored this
month.
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. Starting with a
remastering of the turn-of-the-century theARTS podcast, he began minting
episodes of the Sample Central podcast for the ArakNet radio stream, quickly
throwing his weight behind the renewal of ACiDs pHluid music division and
discovering a hitherto unknown knack for ANSI art with the likes of Sauna.
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
Everyone has a different road to textmode art. Docpop had to first conquer the
world of the yo-yo before finding his way here, in a roundabout fashion. So
if you think you have something to say about niche passions... youve got
another thing coming! But I damn him with faint praise, also adept in the
fields of game design and chiptun music. Youll just have to look him up to
get the full story.
docpop.org
Dos Grog continues in the expansion of our Italian contingent, demonstrating a
playful devotion to the pixelart medium.
instagram.com/dosgrog
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
You dont get to see all aspects of an artists creative practice manifest in
a computer artpack you probably wont get a chance to see EmmaDobles work
in ceramics in these pages, but if you settle for her pixelart, its a well
worthwhile consolation prize.
instagram.com/pixelemme
The Elk is a character who we have crossed paths with several times under
several different guises, but he is difficult to put your finger on for long.
acornelectrontoday.com
Writer, acrylic painter and digital artist, Etana has kept her fingers in
numerous creative pies since the dusk of the artscene with such avenues as
Hallucigenia, Keyframe - the Animation Resource and currently Tilted
Windmills.
athenacooper.ca / twitter.com/athenacooper
Eve draws a lot of hard-edged angular subjects like mecha and buildings in
their pixelart practice. Here, take a look.
twitter.com/cdsnatcher
To conclusively answer the question of just who is Filth and why you should
care that he appeared for the first time as a guest in this art pack, I
could send you down a rabbit hole on 16colo.rs, but you might well not come
back. The man has been exploring, for decades, ANSI arts threshold for
minimal and maximal levels of detail, and cultivating a studied sensitivity
to the precise particulars of the styles of all of his peers. Historically,
he was known as the mouth of Gutter e-mag, one of the core and canonical
texts of the underground computer artscene.
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
Illarterate 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
An oldschool figure in BBS artscene circles, j33p33 has long since forgotten
how well he can draw ANSI, distracted by endless meditations spiralling into
hip-hop loops.
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.
Not that its a competition, but you dont get to call yourself a proper
vintage technology enthusiast until youve exported images youve made on an
Apple II to textile patterns printed on a Jacquard power loom. By these
stringent standards, its possible that kris10roos is in fact the only proper
vintage technology enthusiast!
kristenroos.com
Lawnjart was there, then, but doesnt have time for all you cyberspace
punks. Because time is short, he has no choice but to get in, make his art,
and move on.
Part of a feral tribe of uncontacted textmode artists at the 8bitMUSH at
ANSIART.COM, LDA emerges from a family pixel art concern to grace us with the
imagery of his people.
ldb Laura Brown is a rare bird, perhaps the last practitioner standing of
good old UseNet-style ASCII art, with a masterful command over economy of
slashes, parentheses and asterisks.
asciiartist.com
LegoColin uses a plethora of programs to prepare images for physical
incarnation in the ultimate pixelart composition: assembled using Lego bricks.
instagram.com/lego48x48
Always torn between celebrating both old ways and new practitioners of them, we
salute MaDDoG, making a guest appearance with us for the first time. Well met!
West Coast IRC fellow traveller from our very earliest days, Mattmatthews
guest art has represented Mistigris for over a decade on Wikipedia. He played
an instrumental role in our 20th anniversary reunion and subsequent revival and
renewal over social media, and we are beyond pleased to once again share his
work with you.
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
Melodia doesnt need an artgroup, she is an artgroup. One more case of the
parade continuing after the band stopped playing, courtesy of the bottomless
music in her head she kept on keeping on -- and indeed, has never stopped. We
are humbled by her continuing association with us, as to her, all we have to
offer is drag factor!
soundcloud.com/xennial
Considering that he started in Apathy over two decades ago, Misfit has since
stepped up his pace to become perhaps the hardest-working man in the artscene,
acting as its official spokesperson at the helm of the 16 Colors ANSI of the
Day, when hes not cooking up hot blocks for Blocktronics artpacks or
moonlighting with AMiSH! Somewhere in that busy schedule, he made time to
square away a swell guest piece for us... and now, a year and a half or so
later, were all ready to release it!
deviantart.com/m1sfit
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
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
A holdout celebrant of a fellow traveller extinguished textmode art community,
The New Hotness demonstrates the pinacle of ASCII art as formerly practiced in
the curious forum of GameFAQs.
thenewhotness.info
Ozunaga is just getting warmed up, but this may be the only portion of his
pixelart practice that can be observed at this distance without welders
goggles. Stand back!
instagram.com/ozunaga
Games artist philllllljames has recently arrived at the textmode art
aesthetic, notably the celebrated feel of Commodores PETSCII, but also
seemingly the offbeat textures of Glyph Drawing Club, through which to explore
new visual territory.
shinestrength.xyz
There are many roads to textmode artwork IRC channels are as legitimately
valid an avenue as any. Emerging from the MIRCart realm into the world of
artpacks, Picrotoxin brings a fresh perspective to a classic medium.
instagram.com/picrotoxin
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.
ivomitrainbows.com / twitter.com/pinguino
PiquANSI sporadically draws elaborate boxological mandalas in Rexpaint and it
is our pleasure to periodically share them with you.
@piquansi
Many diamonds in the rough cut their faces in Mistigris before dazzling the
masses, but for advancement in all metrics through everything he tried his hand
at, none wanted it as badly as Quip, who in a disciplined fashion forged
himself into a self-made man of the scene, then found he didnt need it to
continue being who he wanted to be.
instagram.com/quipansi
Roy/SAC is legendary on the periphery of the underground computer art scene,
and notorious within it, for his free and loose ways of commemorating its
traditions and purveying its aesthetic to wider audiences minus a certain
context. He has undertaken the formidable feat of turning fragmentary
alphabets enjoyed in ANSI art logos into complete TheDraw TDF font sets, all
without the involvement or consent of the original artists whose styles are
being bitten. A couple of font sets were derived from an advertisement by
our own Mavrik, so we are biting back and including the font sets in this
release. Enjoy!
roysac.com
Silent Knight was the chief architect of the Dream Factory comic book, yet his
panels for it never ran in its pages. In commemoration of the profound
unlikeliness of the fulfilment of its pledge to be continued, we reprint them
as they originally appeared in a 1998 Hallucigenia artpack.
Duncan Shields aka skonenblades -- slam master, Bully survivor, boylesque
titan, Legend of Bonefish alumnus: he can safely be described as living the
dream.
@bigtallduncan / 365tomorrows.com/duncan-shields/
Artscene OG Smooth has long been on the Mistigris periphery, his telnet BBS
iNK on our distro site list almost since our revival, but this month this
elder statesman, founder of TeklordZ with which Mist Classic spent almost its
entire lifespan attempting unsuccessfully to merge with, descends from the
heavens by which I mean his regular ANSI and ASCII art gigs at Fuel and
Impure to save us -- yet again -- from yet another dopey Cthulu FILEID.DIZ.
Hats off, sir!
www.inktwo.com
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 / @carlosteletextr
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
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
upper.case: storytelling pixelartist or pixel-illustrating storyteller? Why
not both?
instagram.com/upper.case
Warpus was long a familiar name around the underground computer art scene of
the 90s, making himself known in such crews as Lazarus, Function, Glue, and
Septic... but to Mistigris fans he will always go down primarily as the
longest-standing administrator and judge of the long-running Blender IRC
compo series.
Supposing that your interest in retro technology leads you down a hip path
less travelled, and you wind up restoring vintage mechanical typewriters...
how else are you to know that the machine is in complete working order unless
you take the opportunity to demonstrate a little typewriter art?
Wolffdowntheworld is a reasonable man and this is a reasonable conclusion.
instagram.com/wolffdowntheworld
Communities of text art practice emerge through certain social contexts but
the basic premise is such an appealing idea that it keeps getting invented and
reinvented. XTComics draws comic strips using a combination of low ASCII
characters and emoji.
instagram.com/xtcomics
Yaimel Lpez is a Cuban illustrator, recently relocated to Vancouver. His
work has appeared in all sorts of galleries and magazines, but Mist hosted
his first appearance in an artpack. This is now his second.
twitter.com/yaimel1983 / yaimel.com
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.
zxnet.co.uk
MISTIGRIS DISTRIBUTION SITES:
telnet://bbs.inktwo.com:23
telnet://guardian.synchro.net
telnet://chq.phatstar.org:2023
bbs.nz
16colo.rs
artpacks.org
mistigris.org
instagram.com/mistfunk
twitter.com/mistfunk
discord.gg/9R84QUN
tumblr.com/mistfunk
and our usual round of greetz to our colleagues at: blocktronics.org, Legacy,
impure.nl, amish.0w.nz, galza.org, Fire Dream, Break, pungas.space,
@hirmuofficial, paleotronic.com, soundcloud.com/bitcouver, pHluid,
vanchipmusic.ca, null e-mag, ArakNet and TABNet!
But MIRCart can go suck it!!!