Oh my goodness. Everyone in the room whos written twelve infofiles this year,
put your hands up. Anyone? Anyone? All right, Ill go off the cuff and knock
one more out. Is there really anything left to say? We only succeeded in
getting out Christmas artpacks a couple of times in the Mist Classic era,
despite best intentions, and even so it was more likely to squeak out just
before New Years. Monthly artpacks were hard, and it wasnt uncommon to
witness the sad spectacle of Christmas greetings shared sometime in January.
Since firing the works back up, weve been trying to avoid sad spectacles, and
so here we are, firmly in early-late-mid December!
Not only did we manage to get out over a year of consecutive monthly artpacks,
this now marks the first time since its establishment 23 years ago that we here
at Mistigris managed to get out an artpack every single month in a given
calendar year. No one cares if you get out an artpack every month in a fiscal
year, they say -- well, those werent real artpacks, you just staged them for
tax purposes.
Is there much to say about this specific collection beyond acknowledging its
theme and the overall passage of time? Well sure! It is a great case study in
our big tent mandate, with specimens of the teletext that has so dictated the
course of our 2017 as well as seasonal representatives from the Atari ST and
C64 realms manifesting for oldschool solidarity. We have appearances by
very sporadic artists we only cross paths with once or twice a year as far as
were concerned, C64Endings is a Christmas specialist! and by old familiar
familiar friends hi, Horsenburger, Awesome Angela, Melodia, Kalcha, Theresa
Oborn! who we see in our packs virtually every month. Some of the pieces are
brand new, some ... medium contemporary, having been stored after being shared
immediately following the release of MIST1216 last year, and others being
positively historical curations exhumed from the fogs of Christmas Past --
specifically wed like to shine a light on Acidfrogs Christmas jungle from
1996 and Melodias exhumation and rehabilitation of the 1994 Digitallusions
arrangement of Silent and Soft and Slow Descends the Snow, which lended an
excellent soundtrack to our teaser trailer this time around.
Pixel Art For The Heart makes his debut appearance in an artpack this month
with his lovingly tinted landscapes, a visitor from the social media realm
which apparently constitutes our most major audience. This month we hit 500
Instagram followers, a milestone we surpassed on Twitter some time ago. How
many eyeballs do holdouts from the traditional underground computer artscene
constitute? No matter, well continue onwards in our mission to deliver
computer creativity informed by the minimalist constraints of the 20th century
using whatever tools the 21st century provides, catering to sensibilities
belinging to either time period. Apologies to historical figures from the
19th century and time travellers visiting from the 22nd, your perspectives are
unwelcomed here.
Thats the thing about speaking extemporaneously -- the speaking definitely
happens, and you can manage to hit on most of the main talking points, but the
connective tissue may navigate you through some peculiar routes.
If I could make one request of our viewers, it would be to go visit our 2017
Mistigris Holiday Gift Guide... it is of course quite a bit too late to give
anything non-digitally-delivered on that list in time for Christmas, but the
right time to reward our participating artists financially is perennial and
evergreen. We really, really, really cant afford to give them the financial
support that they deserve, but I cant categorically rule out all of you out
there. So please, check out:
mistfunk.tumblr.com/post/168470788472/mistigris-2017-holiday-gift-guide
In closing, Ill poach the greets from our teaser trailer:
Seasons Greetings to our esteemed colleagues in Blocktronics, Break, Fuel,
Galza, Impure, Amish and the customary lump of coal to Duo Daughters. A big,
hearty holiday thanks also to the fine folks at Bitcouver, the Vancouver
Chipmusic Society, the De lencre et des tripes zine, the Masters of Pixel
Art, TABNet, the Horace Phair community, the Sixteen Colours ANSI of the Day,
textmod.es, Demozoo, all our friends in the vintage computing, teletext and BBS
communities, confused crossed wires with the worldwide accordion community,
underground artscene veterans everywhere and all our new friends on every
flavour of social media who quite simply have no idea about any of this.
See you all in 2018!
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