[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU266CumO7E?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Happy Holidays! That’s my way of saying “Here’s one more piece of Christmas art we didn’t get around to sharing with you until after Christmas!” It’s the final installment of the Bells of Yule suite of tracker music from 1994 – the grimmest, darkest song representing the longest night of the Winter Solstice, illustrated here with a Rogue’s Gallery of nasty and crude textmode dudes, plus some filler from the artscene and textmode-related visual idioms of RIPscrip vector art and teletext. Better late than never! (Speaking of which… stay tuned!)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5lnMpq4ns4?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Five years in the making, and yet hastily thrown together over the past couple of days, it’s a fresh Horsenburger teletext portrait of the late George Michael given some proud rainbow colour-cycling in the background and paired with a 2011 chiptune cover of “Last Christmas” by bryface. Together, they’re better! All that plus a parting blow from Melodia, an unused b-side from MIST0416, interpreting an early ‘80s cultural phenomenon as it might have been experienced on an early '80s home microcomputer. Everyone out there, take care of each other – if we can just make it a few days further, we can escape the curse of 2016! (And meet: the curse of 2017.)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

text-mode:

A tool to draw ANSI through music, in realtime. ANSI MIDIo visualizer
is small piece of hardware by Will Lindsay (aka VBLANK) that converts notes to text characters, and velocity to colours.

arcadephile:

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you all have a fantastic day.

blockygraphics:

SANTABAL.BMP, 

retrieved from the Carat Clipart Collection (1997), via cd.textfiles.com. Artist credit appreciated.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fApZFio-aTo?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Today we share with you the fourth movement of our five-part 1994 tracker music epic of original moody instrumental holiday music, remastered by Melodia in 2014, souped up with tons of period seasonal imagery from textmode and artscene sources in 2015 and … paraded out again in 2016. Enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-D0j-awns?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Today we share part 3 (of 5) of 1994’s Bells of Yule suite of seasonal tracker music, from Admiral Skuttlebutt’s Atari ST to your ears! Remastered by Melodia in 2014, we put together a slideshow of plundered textmode visuals to accompany its ~10-minute runtime – this movement has a focus on period Public Domain ANSImation clips. Merry Mist'mas!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Mistigris Christmas 1997 intro

Today we share our final Mist Classic holiday presentation, after skipping 1996 due to the Mistigris World Tour then in effect (and with December 1998 ahead nothing but a bitter waste of failure for us) … but this multimedia bit rocks, with plenty of great tunes, lit and meet reviews, textmode and hirez visuals, a complete Christmas re-skinning of DoDEL and a little musical trolling of Silent (K)night to boot! There’s something for everyone!

Mistigris Christmas 1997 intro

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9NRRadx-zY?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Yesterday we re-shared the second installment of the 5-part Bells of Yule epic seasonal holiday tracked music suite made on an Atari ST in 1994, remastered in 2014 and given period visuals from the PC artscene last year. This time around all we have to do is share the links! The music was composed by Admiral Skuttlebutt, remastered by Melodia, and the visuals this time around focus on 25-line ANSI art, largely from Public Domain sources, especially featuring the works of Ebony Eyes.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l29i4vQx__A?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Yesterday on Mistigram, our Mist Classic Christmas celebrations of December 1995, spliced in and around another coded effect (snowfall here), with the full representation of ANSI, hirez, tracker music (Sentience pulled out the stops rearranging Auld Lang Syne here!) and even lit in this collection. Season’s Greetings and Merry Mist'mas!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5gbddtQcg?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

unwashedmass:

Here it is: The Bells of Yule – an original instrumental suite of seasonal music composed on an Atari ST and released at the end of 1994, lost in the decline of area code 604’s BBS scene circa 1998, rediscovered, remastered by Melodia of Empress Play in 2014, re-released, and given music videos featuring wintry imagery from period artscene and textmode art collections in 2015. Now it is 2016, and all we have to do is remind you of its existence and to enjoy it while it’s in season! Here’s part 1 of 5, featuring the UseNet ASCII art stylings of jgs – stay tuned for the rest!

Ahem – posted to the wrong account, but you get my drift 8)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ8wNA8_Rc?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Aaaand it’s that time of year again: time to dust off the holiday content which, while awesome year-round, is only appropriate in late December. This video combines footage of an early intro made by Dr. CPU in December of 1994 with a hits parade of other seasonal art and writing made by Mistigris members in that month, set to the soundtrack of the first movement of the Bells of Yule music disk, which was also first released in that month. Enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 18, 2016 at 3:55pm UTC

From the MIST1116 artpack collection we have this piece of found art by Steev Hise, an abstract composition rescued from airport security entitled “Tucson: still life with cashews and castor.” Granted, though this image is not the product of intentional human design, it did require the eye of an artist to realise the artistic merit of the image and act to capture it.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 18, 2016 at 3:55pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 17, 2016 at 2:46pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, reNM8R continued his celebratory victory lap of his rediscovery of the artscene with this hirez piece from MIST1116, an exploration of duality – fire vs ice, good vs evil – as exemplified by two angel babes splitting a Mistigris logo cleanly in half. He’s some two decades removed from the artscene, but clearly it still pulses boldly in his veins!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 17, 2016 at 2:46pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 16, 2016 at 1:28pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, another painting (“Smoke and Mirrors”) by the hugely talented Delphine Hennelly from MIST1116 – another piece in her series exploring the phenomenon of women and selfies. Woman posing for a painting drawn by a man = fine art, woman posing for a self-portrait = vain and shallow, right? That’s the standard breakdown. These paintings challenge that narrative. Sisters are doing it for, by and of themselves.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 16, 2016 at 1:28pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 15, 2016 at 9:37am UTC

“Lit” (short for “literature” of course – generally in an artscene context taken to mean poetry and short fiction) has always been the odd man out in Mist artpacks. Don’t blame us, blame The Narccissist, president of NWA (New Wave Artists), the 604-based artgroup which merged with Quebec’s GRIP/AD into iMPERiAL, out of whose ashes Mistigris emerged. If The Narc hadn’t given us the false impression that lit was a valid and welcome form of creative expression among the computer arts, Cthulu never would have joined an artgroup – indeed, his trailblazing friend Creideiki never would have even obtained access to the NWA WHQ “Digital Holocaust” and blazed the trail for us to follow through.

But we did labour beneath this misapprehension (which RaDMaN made sure to challenge straight out of the gate with his expulsion of Israfel, the paragon of artscene lit, following ACiD’s absorption of GOTHiC.) Consequently, Cthulu looked for lit writers to form part of Mist’s’ membership. Relatively few people took him up on it, so he inflated their contributions by simply curating captured texts from dialup BBS and echomail message boards, simply republishing them (usually with permission). BBSes were a text medium in habited by users of MS-DOS, which was another text medium, and consequently the words flowed freely. But by the end of the ‘90s, folks accessing the web through Netscape in Windows '95 were quite a bit less in the habit of putting forth their feelings in letters and words, and the decline of this always-considered-marginal artform was irreversible. (It actually saw a curious late-stage boom in the form of CiA’s abysmal lit division ScrollZ under the steering of Blue Devil, but I can’t fairly present that as anything other than fiddling while Rome burns.)

So, Mistigris revived in 2014, and we thought we could represent all the classic streams of computer art – textmode visuals, tracker music, and lit of course! But Crowkeeper aside, classic lit was a defunct concern. (Even the logorrheic Cthulu himself has not shared any original works as part of our revival! Of course, he has no words remaining after hammering out all these infofiles and blog posts.) In any case, we were interested in advancing our scope to keep pace with recent trends in digital expression, not purely being a museum collection of historical re-enactment. So Cthulu began cruising for some literary works written in emoji. He pitched the idea to his invereterately experimental performance poetry colleague RC Weslowski, but nothing came of it in MIST1015.

Like the Minecraft pixelart, we washed our hands of artforms we’d like but couldn’t obtain ourselves. Naturally, then some emoji texts immediately presented themselves. Over on a spiritual successor to the BBS message forums, a Slack packed with inheritors of the legacy of the proto-wiki Everything2, Flamingweasel was taking a break from Pico-8 game development to translate the first book of the Bible into emoji for kicks. And lo, here it is. We saw that it was good, and it was good.

Pulling down some super-high-resolution emoji icons for the occasion, we made this the opener of our MIST1116 trailer video, because in all the history of literature, is there really any better opening than “In the beginning…”? God (here depicted as “old black man”) then creates the heavens and the Earth, and we feature a couple of artpack pieces dealing with the sky and the land before slipping into a “transforming the human body through technology” vein.

Anyhow, zoom in and see if you can follow along!

Genesis 1 King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 15, 2016 at 9:37am UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 14, 2016 at 4:12pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, we feature this 2D work from MIST1116 by our MIST1015 sculpture star Theresa Oborn. Are they three pearls in a nest of seaweed? Three zygotes implanting themselves in uterine lining? Or perhaps three stages of a Julia set fractal? It is… nice to look at. That’s all it takes to satisfy us!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 14, 2016 at 4:12pm UTC

[wpvideo vXykNdCX]

Today’s Mistigram item from MIST1116 was selected as the 16 Colours ANSI of the Day on November 27th (the second time that month the sporadic artist had been so honoured!) but I wanted to wait until I had the chance to share the souped-up version I’d tried cobbling together for the MIST1116 trailer video (before ultimately rejecting it as not thematically fitting in).

Well, here it is! VileR, in association with his fellow archivists at The Dos Collection, was celebrating the 35th anniversary of the release of the IBM PC computer, the best way he knew how: by making reference to the BASIC game by Bill Gates that shipped with the machine’s PC-DOS operating system (running under its BASICA interpreter), DONKEY.BAS. This is not the first time this year VileR released a masterpiece involving DONKEY.BAS – a few months ago, as you may recall, he re-implemented it in textmode as “Sorry Ass”, boiling it down so concisely it fit in a floppy diskette’s boot sector.

I was hoping to better ANSImate the car blasting through the BASICA start screen (Did You Know: double-arrow characters used on the BASICA screen are ANSI control characters, so attempts to depict them accurately will result in glitched display output. I sure found out, repeatedly!), but my window of opportunity to soup up this file’s presentation coincided exactly with me losing access to my main computer and the opportunity passed me by. Alas! Maybe for the PC’s 40th I can take another crack at it. Hats off, VileR!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 12, 2016 at 1:25pm UTC

And today on Mistigram, in the recent MIST1116 artpack the incredible Starstew gifted us with “Threecoil”, a piece of very contemporary high resolution artwork devised so as to appear to be the ingenius output of some primordial plotter hooked up to a monochrome terminal circa 1978.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 12, 2016 at 1:25pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 11, 2016 at 7:17pm UTC

Yesterday on Mistigram, we featured this appearance by our random Twitter textmode acquaintance Spitoufs (aka Lobo) from the recent MIST1116 artpack release. It’s a coloured ASCII art rendition of the 1913 Japanese superhero Ōgon Bat! (Don’t worry, we had to Google him also.))

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 11, 2016 at 7:17pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 10, 2016 at 1:47pm UTC

From the recent MIST1116 artpack comes this piece of high resolution visual artwork by Jamie Stantonian, juxtaposing a classic nude photograph with biometric analysis the likes of which Facebook, the Xbox 360 Kinect and the CIA run on user-contributed content and surveillance footage to determine just who you are, which ads to serve you, and where you’re going.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 10, 2016 at 1:47pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 9, 2016 at 3:01pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, a painting from MIST1116 by Jenn Ashton entitled “Capacity”. On a first viewing, it might look like a map of ski runs at a resort, but this is secretly computer art of the highest degree: those are capacitors, and this is a circuit diagram on a breadboard!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 9, 2016 at 3:01pm UTC

[gallery]
j33p33’s oldschool ANSI art Mist logo from atop the infofile of the recent MIST1116 artpack was today’s Mistigram pick, but those of you who saw it in our MIST1116 trailer would remember that it passed through a few beats en route to completion. j33p33 flaunted different takes and approaches in the internal Mistigris Facebook group all the while laughing off polite requests to submit an .ANS version so it could be used in the artpack’s infofile. Then he suffered catastrophic SSD card data loss! But fortunately, somehow, we found a mostly-complete version of the logo at its most fully-featured to run in the artpack, and if the bottom of the S and the crescent beneath the M were never filled in… no one ever complained.

Along the way, you can enjoy the diversions the logo went through – an icy take to counter its ultimately fiery temperament. Also you can see a version moderated by “Deep Dream”, as well as xer0’s post-complete glitched-out version. They’re only four little letters, but they leave you many, many options!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 7, 2016 at 2:15pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, another painting from the recent MIST1116 artpack. This one is by Finnish painter Antti Minkkinen aka Unseen Fate, of pen15 (among other affiliations). I assigned it a flippant filename involving saunas trying to make some sense of what I was seeing, but only Antti knows for sure what’s going on in this busy scene.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 7, 2016 at 2:15pm UTC

[gallery]

Cyber Monday? Let me tell you about Cyber Monday. Back when I was a kid, every Monday was “Cyber Monday”! But… I guess it didn’t mean quite the same thing it means now. What was I talking about again?

Oh yes – our artists, they do not get paid for appearing in artpacks. But if you approve of their work, here you do have a timely chance (for there is a gift-giving occasion rapidly approaching) to become their patron or at least a collector of their creations. In some cases, you can get your hands on physical versions of their artworks – reproductions, or even occasional originals – and in other cases you can purchase the services needed to mint virtual goods to order, deliverable immediately upon completion with no shipping of electrons needed! (And in some final cases – curiously over-represented among the musicians – all you get is the opportunity to give an artist a tip in support of the work they’re creating anyway. But they may provide convenient legitimate MP3 downloads where the only free alternatives were streams and hassle.) I’m here to lay out the grand catalogue of Mistigris artpack participants with goods for sale this holiday season, and if you’re part of the artscene and have a storefront that could use a signal boost, let us know and we can fold you in here, as what you’ve got will probably be up the alley of any of our hypothetical customers also.

* Abstract painter Andrea Schmidt, last spotted in MIST1015, has micro and macro paintings for sale to suit a range of budgets, from $28-840… and not much in between!

* An Historic, whose accordion JRPG arrangements you’re still enjoying from MIST1116, is a musical genius engaged in several compelling projects. One donation gets you access to his entire vaults!

* Another feverish musical madman, Seattle’s Brad Dunn, gives you precious few opportunities to financially support his vital work. But here is one!

* For the love of God and all that is holy, please fund bryface, so he can give up his day job and become a full-time international chipmusic evangelist.

* They only contributed a single song to MIST1015, but the Creaking Planks have … a second song available by donation for you to further enjoy. They also have awesome T-shirts, but need to get their act together before they can send you one. But while on the subject of their music…

* You can enjoy $20 prints of Elin Jonsson’s perfectly gothy creatures from Afterland (which you can also play for free on iOS and Android devices – micropayments optional!)

* Mist Classic writer Eoanya is living the dream, and has a few books available for sale – including a brand new one not yet turning up on her Amazon page.

* Mist Classic visual artist Etana has her original paintings available for a song ($50-250), plus other goodies. (But I have the only Mistigris coffee mug she designed!)

* You can give Mist Classic mainstay Happyfish a tip for her award-winning filk music!

* The teletext genius known as Horsenburger, rockstar of the recent MIST1116, is not only taking £20 commissions for portraits, but he’s just branched out into wearables also!

* Production guru Ill-esha has a vast back catalogue and it is for sale, so load up!

* Tireless painter Jenn Ashton sells a wide range of both prints and originals as well as a variety of other goods.

* You only saw the drawings of Jenny Ritter in MIST1015, but you’ll thank me for having a chance to get an earful of her music!

* Jeremy Stewart also is a creative industry whose iceberg we’ve only been in a position to show the merest tip of.

* Self-publishing DIY guru Jim Munroe has books and ebooks, comics, movies and games, all available for sale and all eminently worthwhile.

* Kevin Bryce was the favorite musician of Mist Music when we revived in October 2014; maybe his tunes will catch your fancy also?

* Lord Nikon has graced our collections with insanely detailed typewriter art, which is also available for sale as prints and on T-shirts.(Also available for sale: shirts featuring his ASCII art designs, released elsewhere.

* The paintings and drawings of Mist Classic artist Maeve Wolf are available for sale on a casual basis: “Just email me to buy!”

* The vintage video game cover art designs of Marc Ericksen are available for sale as prints and on T-shirts.

* The textmode art designs of Blocktronics typography wizard Matt Matthew are available as prints and you would be exceedingly foolish to not take advantage of the opportunity to class up your house with his works on every flat surface.

* Melodia is just pivoting her “Paleotronic” shop from store to workshop, so opportunities to financially support her ventures there are up in the air… and her indispensible mobile apps are given away for free, so no luck there… but you can at the least show your appreciation by flipping her a tip on her Empress Play music page!

* It didn’t ever really occur to the Mythical Man that anyone would want to buy his paintings… but he was delighted when someone inquired, and is happy to sell his original pieces. Just ask him about the one you’d like!

* A selection of the colourful original paintings of Nick Lakowski are for sale at prices ranging from $360-1150.

* Mist Classic musician Onyx pivoted to writing sometime around the turn of the century, and you can purchase his books and ebooks through Amazon (or, if you like, in hardcover from Lulu.)

* Galza’s ASCII art (and now PETSCII) genius Otium has his textmode designs for sale as prints, garments and phone cases, with a secondary EU-based shop to help local consumers avoid import taxes.

* Phatal’s striking design “Two Minutes to Midnight” from MIST1016 is available in limited quantities as a print and on T-shirts. Inquire directly!

* When we say that Raquel Meyers delivers the goods, we usually aren’t speaking quite so literally, but her brutalist PETSCII and teletext are available for sale in book and fabric forms through her website.

* Drum ‘n bass producer Psidream has an enormous back catalogue of recordings, and they are all available for sale.

* Mist Classic artist Sentience is involved with the graphic design venture Heart Monsta, whose creations are available for sale today!

* Starstew’s latest offering is a book for the cat-lovers on your Christmas list, but he has other goods for sale through his Etsy page.

* Also on Etsy, you can find the Sculpey creatures that crawled out of the feverish brain of Theresa Oborn.

* A limited supply of the original fine art creations of Tom Heuckendorff are available for sale for budgets ranging from $30-300.

* Finally, you can flip Vordreque, the hardest working man in retrowave, a tip.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 6, 2016 at 2:19pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, Kalcha delivers more of his unique Shift_JIS illustration (the ASCII art of Japan, using a vastly extended character set) from the MIST1116 artpack with this suite of nine Gods from the Hindu pantheon.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 6, 2016 at 2:19pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 5, 2016 at 2:24pm UTC

Today on Mistigram we share this image from MIST1116, Pinguino’s cover artwork to this year’s ToonCon program guide. The movie Hackers may have celebrated its 20th anniversary, but it is more on fleek than ever!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 5, 2016 at 2:24pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 4, 2016 at 2:15pm UTC

Everyone’s always making ANSI art of comic book characters, but no one’s ever making ASCII art of comic strip characters. So alike, yet so different! This year in MIST1116 we compiled what must be a decade of textmode doodles made by my old TABNet colleague Pannekoekologist into a digest of textmode art adaptations of Tony Millionaire’s ‘90s alt-weekly staple, “Maakies”, boiled down into something we couldn’t resist calling “Maakscii art”. Pictured here is the dipsomaniac character Drinky Crow, likely mere panels before filling his head with bullets.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 4, 2016 at 2:15pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 3, 2016 at 6:40pm UTC

As art imitates life, no contrived glitch can be as compelling as a genuine hardware error resulting from the inadvertent contact between a fragile monitor and a hard object. Garlic Joy made this expensive discovery and immediately we knew we had a cyberspace readymade on our hands perfect for MIST1116. Where pictures of the contents of a monitor might conventionally be described as “screen shots”, these were branded “screen shards”.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 3, 2016 at 6:40pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 2, 2016 at 9:52am UTC

Today on Mistigram, an oil painting tribute to the Thin White Duke, if he were a small piece of green citrus fruit, as released in the recent MIST1116 artpack collection. The Mythical Man did this oil painting rendition of a bit of David Bowie wordplay, taking his song “Life on Mars” from 1971’s Hunky Dory album and tweaking a letter, turning it into … “Lime on Mars”. As one does!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 2, 2016 at 9:52am UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 1, 2016 at 1:18pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, another genuine Horsenburger teletext work released in last week’s MIST1116 collection (was it somehow impossibly only a week ago?) – the only textmode fanart I have ever seen of the UK’s dark SF comedy Red Dwarf, the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel depicted here.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Dec 1, 2016 at 1:18pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 30, 2016 at 4:23pm UTC

Yes, the comforting images of pop culture nostalgia and the cool arm’s-length remove of abstract pieces can appeal, but there are real and important struggles going on in the world today, perhaps none of them more important than climate change. Here in Canada, the main narrative is Alberta trying to kibosh our responsibilities under the Paris Agreement and get its oil and tar sands bitumen to emerging markets before they complete the switch to a post-petroleum economy – as we all will need to do in order to slow down the pace at which the ecosystem is flying apart.

Today’s Mistigram image is a painting from the MIST1116 artpack released last week, “Scorched sign, Unist'ot'en pipeline blockade” by Nick Lakowski (who, despite fond memories of BBSes, has had no involvement with the computer art scene up to this point.) Unist'ot'en is a settlement on unceded First Nations territory in the wilds of northern British Columbia, strategically situated where Enbridge has been hoping to run the Northern Gateway pipeline through to Kitimat. Time and again, Enbridge surveyors have attempted, sometimes backed up by the RCMP, to obtain access to the area, and the denizens of the settlement have thwarted them every time: we do not consent to this action, and you have no jurisdiction here – a position backed up by the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting from the hasty, treaty-less colonization of British Columbia.

Yesterday Canada’s Prime Minister put the nail in the coffin of Northern Gateway – but he gave government approval to two further pipeline projects, Line 3 and Kinder Morgan’s twinned Trans Mountain, the latter of which will be running quite a bit closer to Mistigris HQ. This is not what we voted for, and we, also, do not consent to this action.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 30, 2016 at 4:23pm UTC

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Queen fiend Nitnatsnoc must be spinning in his retirement! I was waiting to feature this one in Mistigram to build some tension, but the Sixteen Colors ANSI of the Day was drawn straight toward it like a moth to a flame! The artist: cccfire, another parallelly-evolved case of ANSI art from the 8bitMUSH like today’s Mistigram artist LDA. The artwork: an extra-wide XBin piece of monochrome ANSI art enshrining the members of the glam rock Queen (and enjoy the bonus, the same scene quite more minimally arranged by some anonymous SharpSCII artist), plus a late-breaking addition of the group’s logo in glorious colour… and what we can most definitiveely describe as the ultimate, final “smallest textmode Mistigris logo” of all time.

The piece competed against the fruit of Blocktronics (including no fewer than four pieces by the godly ungennant) at the Demosplash demoparty earlier this month in its truncated form, and placed… 10th. (But in his defense, cccfire runs laps around all of the multi-decade veterans who outscored him in light of a “most improved” metric, maturing as a real contender with – an admittedly idiosyncratic style – in under a year. At this rate cccfire will be pulling down top scores for his ANSI art when all of Blocktronics will have been 15 years in the cold ground!)

We will revisit the piece on Mistigram to take a peek at some of its finer details. And happy to say, we have other recent pieces that the AOTD has lighted upon over the past few days to also celebrate with you – but they carry with them a little additional bonus content that needs to be a massaged a bit before we serve up their full stories to you.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 29, 2016 at 1:59pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, this Blade-Runnerian spaceport ANSI art landscape by LDA from the wilds of the 8bitMUSH at ANSIART.COM is a pure slice of oldschool (practically Public Domain) bliss, evoking happy memories of hours spent exploring in rounds of Trade Wars 2002. Maybe those vessels have their bellies full of volunteers to populate the off-world colonies… and maybe the captain’s alignment is good and he won’t open the airlock as soon as he leaves orbit. Maybe. My point is: it’s a hell of a sunset.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 29, 2016 at 1:59pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 28, 2016 at 12:50pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, we feature a painting by Maeve Wolf from last week’s MIST1116 artpack release. While she drew some ANSI art back in the Mist Classic era, in more recent years she’s taken up painting and employment in the field of architecture – which leads us to today’s selection, one of her two paintings from that collection blending elements of all three realms!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 28, 2016 at 12:50pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 27, 2016 at 2:17pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, the first of many, many teletext pieces from the recent MIST1116 drawn by Horsenburger: US viewers may not be able to place him, but here in Canada we were exposed to pop culture from both sides of the pond – it’s the Danger Mouse spin-off Count Duckula!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 27, 2016 at 2:17pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 26, 2016 at 1:37pm UTC

A day after his first appearance in an artpack, our still-fresh MIST1116, we look to the work of Cuban artist Yaimel López to try to find some understanding in today’s death of Fidel Castro. The powerful ideological symbolism in this piece, entitled “The Man”, is potent stuff, even if the nuances of just what it all means are still left up to personal interpretation. One thing for sure: nothing is as it seems, but toward what end? Well, I suppose that’s an eternal constant of life. So much for deeper meaning!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 26, 2016 at 1:37pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 25, 2016 at 3:41pm UTC

In the style of the logo from Viz Magazine comes this, the teletext introduction to Illarterate’s MISTFAX teletext sequence in the just-released MIST1116 artpack! (which, of course, you can browse over here.) Sadly, the promises of naughty words and pictures are not substantiated… unless it turns out that something prurient is waiting to be unleashed by the teletext “REVEAL” button!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 25, 2016 at 3:41pm UTC

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It gives us great pleasure (and enormous relief) to announce that MIST1116, the Mistigris computer artpack collection for which we’d been gathering submissions since the end of April, is finally out following a series of delays.

With a strong current of pieces dealing with themes of technology, transhumanism and cyberspace, there’s also plenty to enjoy to suit camps old and new alike – several varieties of textmode artwork, including typewriter masterpieces and an unstoppable parade of teletext, plus the “real-life” art forms historically absent, including drawing, painting, photography and collage. (Still no dance! We’ve got to have something to strive toward, I guess.)

And keeping us relevant despite our celebrating the occasion of our 22nd anniversary, the kids will enjoy an unsettling SnapChat face-swap and an canonical literary work transliterated into emoji.

(Also, at least three accordions. They’re made to fit in there thematically somehow, but huh – go figure!)

If you’d like to download the entire collection in one 185-meg go for local enjoyment, please point your web browser to bit.ly/MIST1116 ; if on the other hand you’d like to wander through a garden of thumbnails via a web gallery, textmod.es is hosting (most of) it at bit.ly/MIST1116gallery

(Pictured: “V for Vendetta” ANSI adaptation by cccfire
“Smoke and Mirrors” by Delphine Hennelly
Textile Kaleidoscope by Daniel Wickert
“God organ, its jubilant appreciation” painting by Nick Lakowski
Judge Dredd teletext by Illarterate
“A Hundred Impossible Species of Blue” collage by Arielle Olivier
“The Old Guitarist” Shift_JIS adaptation by Kalcha
“Maakscii art” by Pannekoekologist
“Couture” drawing by Theresa Oborn
“Imissthenineteenhundredandnineties” by xer0.)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 24, 2016 at 8:34am UTC

Today on Mistigram, a piece of hirez (high resolution graphics) trapped for years in the belly of the shipwrecked M-9808 artpack (finally released to the public in 2015) drawn by Knightmare, depicting some green cartoon character (my guess is The Mask) performing some incomprehensible gesture with his hand with the assistance of some props. It’s not bad – I just don’t understand it.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 24, 2016 at 8:34am UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 23, 2016 at 2:20pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, this ANSI art logo by Whazzit capped off his mermaid ANSImation with Kirkman in last year’s MIST1015 artpack. Previously I equated the blue with water but now I’m thinking it might be more the phosphorescence of jellyfish tentacles or electric eels, wriggling among the seaweed growing amongst the planks of a sunken vessel.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 23, 2016 at 2:20pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 22, 2016 at 2:08pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, a curious experiment from the desk of Grim Reaper, the longstanding VGA department coordinator of Mist Classic. The one major idea in play here is wondering what a hirez (high resolution) artist could do with the circumscribed canvas permitted a textmode artist in the space alloted for use in a FILE_ID.DIZ file, the brief description of an archive’s contents that would display on BBS file bases. I guess he got stuck thinking on iconic logos beginning with the letter “M”, so we got a peculiar association with a brand we likely would never have endorsed or given free advertising to.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 22, 2016 at 2:08pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 21, 2016 at 2:07pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, an ANSI art Mist logo veering on the abstract by Tincat from a collaboration in our July 1997 artpack. As for the slogan? You know what you get when you throw everything at the wall and see what sticks? Then you take everything that stuck, and see which among those sticks the most… basically, the Mistfunk movement Tincat spearheaded was selectively breeding for catchiness rather than clear messaging.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 21, 2016 at 2:07pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 20, 2016 at 3:17pm UTC

Wake up, sheeple! Yesterday on Mistigram we featured this ANSI art sheep – one of only two I can think of, both from Mistigris – drawn by Etana as part of a BBS-screen-sized Mistigris promo in our two-year anniversary artpack in the vicinity of October 1996. I don’t know who this ovine is giving the side-eye to, but they’ve clearly got some suspicions about the company they’re keeping.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 20, 2016 at 3:17pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 19, 2016 at 1:41pm UTC

Tempo probably didn’t intend to kill Mistigris for fifteen years and change when he gifted this piece of website art to us, but nonetheless that was the effect of his generous gesture. Thinking we could kill two birds with one stone by innovating the artpack-as-website, we invested our energies heavily in exploring the untravelled territory at great length (in M-9808, finally released in 2015) and the only thing we ended up killing was ourselves. Hardly seems worth it, to look at it, but at the time it seemed a promising sign that we were on the right track. Signs: don’t read too much into them.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 19, 2016 at 1:41pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 18, 2016 at 2:23pm UTC

On Mistigram today, something unique – Mistigris membership and artscene terminology mixed up into a word search! It has the distinctive fingerprints of Mist Classic VGA department head Thanatos all over it – an intriguing idea, presented like a prototype. But we were still using MS-DOS when this came out in October of 1997, so it wasn’t too alienating.

What’s that squiggle in between the I and the S? Oh – it’s his initials, TH, which look perfect when viewed in hirez mode.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 18, 2016 at 2:23pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 17, 2016 at 2:04pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, a hirez vga logo from our 3rd anniversary, circa October 1997, by Bryce. (I know, I know, a computer artist in the ‘90s called Bryce? Do you think ReNoise would make a good DJ name?)

This seems to be the only appearance Bryce made in our back catalogue, but at least he packed in enough glitz and sparkle to make up for a whole career with us! (One question: how come the background gradient isn’t in effect inside the hole of the “g”? Is it a gateway to a similar, but slightly different, dimension? Only Bryce knows for certain, and he’s not talking!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 17, 2016 at 2:04pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 16, 2016 at 2:21pm UTC

Today on Mistigram we featured an extraordinary ASCII art / hirez hybrid by Dead Soul that first ran in our January 1998 artpack. I’m not sure precisely what relationship there is, if any, between the foreground graffiti logos and the manga-style ASCII art in the background, but they are most definitely juxtaposed.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 16, 2016 at 2:21pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 15, 2016 at 2:52pm UTC

From June of 1998 – nearly the end of Mist Classic – comes this selection, a rendered shoreline landscape by Quebec’s Enelf Daragard (does anyone know where he can be found today?) illustrating a fragment of song lyric by Otnoo Ishphoo (his song “Setting Sun” ironically opening with the phrase “Delirious blue wash over me”, a colour not seen anywhere up in this joint!)

Nominally we’re still prioritizing pieces containing Mistigris iconography… represented here by a single letter “M”. Good enough! There weren’t too many other artscene groups beginning with “M” we could be confused with…

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 15, 2016 at 2:52pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 14, 2016 at 2:13pm UTC

And finally, from December of 1994, we get caught up with today’s Mistigram posting – this sliiiightly pHUNKy ANSI art Mist logo by White Insanity. It’s a peculiar logo that came on top of a quite peculiar illustration which we will be sure to share with you down the line, once we’ve exhausted our supplies of “Mist” logos 8) Perplexing, but at least it’s got lots of personality!

Today, after nearly 22 years, I finally did see the lemur. (It’s in the illustration, not the logo.)
Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 14, 2016 at 2:13pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 13, 2016 at 1:29pm UTC

Yesterday, Mistigram featured this newschool ASCII art rendition of Image Comics’ big man on campus Spawn, drawn by forgotten gem Crystal Meth and first released in our May 1997 joint artpack with Dark Illustrated in the culmination of the Mistigris World Tour.

The Mistigram pool is extensively shuffled according to a few criteria so we don’t get all the same artform in a row, there’s a good mix between early and late Mist classic, keeping too many logos in a row from appearing and preventing an individual artist from dominating a week unless we darned well deliberately intend for them to do so… but we don’t adjust for subject. This picture was planned to run weeks and months ago, but ended up in a spot where we would have ended up with two or even three Spawns in a row. There is probably room to do Spawn Week, but if we do end up rolling that way, I’d prefer for it to be on purpose 8)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 13, 2016 at 1:29pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 12, 2016 at 7:03pm UTC

With … quite a bit less of a story behind it, the following day’s Mistigram piece was this mad scientist hirez by Grinch, originally released in August 1997 and intended to be thrown up here following Happyfish’s ANSI art test tube before… life intervened.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 12, 2016 at 7:03pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 12, 2016 at 5:45am UTC

U> Has anyone done meme images scene art?
C> once in a blue moon it happens

U> Meme image
U> I mean stuff like pepe the frog etc
U> all colors are on default palette
U> Ansi green is similar to pthalo green and it’s pepes green color
U> I’m gonna push some ansi turds tonight

He couldn’t have known how true he was! Unseen Fate of pen15 generously got in some of our earliest ANSI art submissions in the crazy six-month call for submission period for MIST1116 (due out this weekend, I’m serious this time!) and the problem with the ample lead time is that it gave memetic subject matter time to mutate and go horribly wrong.

C> I’m a little concerned about recent developments vis a vis pepe the frog

U> Yas
U>
Don’t include

C>it’s a shame, because as ansi art it’s on fleek and as far as viral memes go, I guess we didn’t anticipate just how far it would pop, but for the wrong reasons

U>Yea
U>
And its origin is nice and clean

C>I can’t think of a way to include it while simultaneously stating “we disavow white supremacy and fascism”, beyond making him painfully shill for Hillary, which I think would be … trying a little too hard.

U>Just assholes turned it into shite
U>
Yas
U>
No pee pee until this has settled
U>
Don’t include it
U>Its hazard now
U>And I don’t want to be associated with those asshats namely alt right dicks and nazis

U>Last time Pepe was seen was 2007 in boy’s club comic. After that it became meme at 4chan
U>
Only last year there has been new 4 panel strip about Pepe
U>
Basically 4chan fuckers destroyed Pepe
U>
Anyway
U>
Internet ruins everything ??

C>Amen!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 12, 2016 at 5:45am UTC

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Last night our community radio colleagues at the long-running Art of Beatz radio program closing the daily broadcast schedule at CFRO Co-Op Community Radio (100.5 fm in Vancouver BC) were kind enough to have us on their show to present a curated hourlong tour through the rich history of the .MOD tracking and computer music tradition of area code 604, by way of promoting the imminent MIST1116 artpack battering down the gates.

Tonight on Art Of Beatz Radio: Mistigris and Chad Munson
Hour 1: Mistigris
Tuck in your Tamagotchi and crack open a frosty bottle of J0lt cola, for everything old is new again: this week we’re celebrating a local tradition of 2 and a half decades of computer music out of area code 604 with Cthulu of the computer art collective MiSTiGRiS (est. 1994), who will be representing a golden thread of chiptunes and musictrackers from the LSDJ of today all the way back to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Sine waves, static channels, and samples – oh my!

You can hear the whole hourlong broadcast as a digital audio stream or, if you already know the history and don’t want me blabbering on top of all the songs, I’ve prepared a download of “just the tunes”. And here’s the playlist!

Freddy43 / Mistigris - Trackerfix song, 2016
Lofryr - 5th Dimension, Apr 1993
AcidFrog - Drowning In Your Love, Aug 1995
Admiral Skuttlebutt / Digitallusions remixed by Marauder / Euphonix - Rave 95
Esquire - C02, Oct 1997
Jazz / Euphonix remixed by Sidewinder - Night of the Living Hoovers, 1995
The Pope / The Immortal Syndicate - Christe 1, Apr 1996
Fingers / Euphonix - Otesnpyneneidells, Sept 1994
Unicode / Mistigris - Remember, Oct 2015
Ill-esha - Line by line, Oct 2015
Haquisaq / Mistigris - Night Shift, 2001
Cthulu / Mistigris - pure white light, 1999
Anton Van Oosbree - Aerodynamic (Daft Punk), 2016
Obsidian Zero / Sonic Equinox - Good Night, 1998

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 10, 2016 at 1:51pm UTC

We laugh that we do not cry. Way back in April, before the hands of Fate were felt making the inconceivable inevitable, the Mistigris founder’s elite alter-ego k-ThUlU++ released this abysmal chimera – half machine-converted textmode art, half TheDraw font – in our traditional April Fools’ pack of “bad art”. (Bad, BAD art! No cookie!)

The likelihood that developments in global affairs will lead to an increase in the greatness of textmode art can be rated as … unlikely.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 10, 2016 at 1:51pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 9, 2016 at 9:19am UTC

As Horsenburger was getting his teletext groove back, he produced a few caracatures of right-wing politians, such as this rendition of “Tiny Hands Trump”. For a laugh, we folded them in to our MIST1016 Hallowe'en artpack of a week and a half ago, keeping good company with various creepy characters, chilling scenarios and assorted monsters. We’re not laughing now.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 9, 2016 at 9:19am UTC

[wpvideo 4LKAt0i4]

Not two weeks after we released MIST1016, and already another collection is battering at the gates, demanding to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. This is it, folks, the collection for which we’ve been soliciting, gathering, stockpiling, and bottling up & shaking art for over six months now. Due to qualitative changes, what you end up with is somehow more than a mere six monthly artpacks would have been: it’s a massive monument of computer art, and we have skimmed some excellence off of its top to share with you in this video. The actual collection will follow this weekend. In the meantime, here’s a four-minute highlights reel for you to enjoy. (And if you find you’d like to spread the word, you’ll probably have better luck with the copy up on YouTube.)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 8, 2016 at 2:53pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, a joint ANSI art depiction of X-Man Colossus drawn by Wetworks of Mist and The Green Hornet of Dark Illustrated as part of our Mistigris World Tour appearance with Dark in May of 1997. I’m not certain who did what, but I’d put good money on that background fire having come from the desk of TGH.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 8, 2016 at 2:53pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 7, 2016 at 2:04pm UTC

“It surrounds you… it consumes you…” Today on Mistigram, we have this vga hirez Mistigris promo purportedly drawn by our longtime VGA hirez (high resolution visual artwork) department head Grim Reaper. As he was sometime after the fact (hello, Google Image Search!) busted for plagiarising quite a great deal, it’s impossible to know for sure that it’s by him – but the rule of thumb is that this drawing probably wouldn’t have been rated awesome enough to be worth the risk of stealing, and so it probably is the genuine article. It’s… not bad, all things considered! The ‘90s were the era of Rob Liefeld anatomy, so this plucky dragon is in good company.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 7, 2016 at 2:04pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 6, 2016 at 1:34pm UTC

Not that we wouldn’t post Hallowe'en art and works by Nail every day if we could, but today on Mistigram, back to the regular routine: one of the final huzzahs from Mist Classic, this piece of RIPscrip vector art by longtime Mist RIP specialist Lady Blue, with her buddy Kitiara of RCA helping out with the background miasma. It was released in May of 1998, and is one of the very, very few pieces of artwork to acknowledge the initial metaphorical conceit of the name “Mistigris” – though more commonly understood as French for “alleycat”, from there the word was further applied to a variant of poker in which the jokers are wild. Ripe with (largely untapped) symbolism potential! The writing on the playing cards looks simple, but I can’t think of a simple way to make it happen in RIPscrip editors – which is the hallmark of a great artist, making the difficult look effortless! If anyone has seen Lady Blue, please send her our way: we miss her!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 6, 2016 at 1:34pm UTC

And a bonus Guy Fawkes Night special, a very special Mistigram teletext preview of the upcoming (what?!) MIST1116 artpack, drawn by Illarterate (after V for Vendetta).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMb9gLKhDk2/

Today on Mistigram, one last Nail showcase - he didn’t just dress our October 2016 infofiles with ANSI art Mistigris iconography, he also graced our October 2015 infofiles with two more very strong logos - here you can enjoy the one that’s graced the header of our Facebook group for the past year! It’s something pretty special. (and in case you wonder, the other one, which we are leaving in reserve in the event of some future blogging emergency, is also pretty great, too!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMbtewuBuNw/

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 9:57pm UTC

It was 1998, and I’d messed up. The artists had followed me, more or less, like a crazy cult leader through the desert through the lion’s share of 1997 with the Mistigris World Tour, and when we finally “came home” to resume releasing artpacks under our own name, I resolved to indulge them as they had humoured me, and give them what they wanted: regular, monthly releases. They had other, not-unreasonable requests – split the packs into different disks focusing on textmode art, hirez visuals and music. And then the breaking point: they wanted us to include “real-world art” in our packs. I was inclined to agree – the more art, the better! – but the path forward in such an unprecedented direction was unclear, and the technology to help us decidedly crude, the scanners and cameras of the time being huge, slow and lossy. So I dithered and delayed. Meanwhile, my department heads were stirring the pot putting a strange new emphasis on QC, “quality control”, with the idea that it would inspire artists to produce better work. But the slogan of Mist had long been “art for the artists”, so they were thus quite accustomed to doing what they liked and hoping we felt the same way. Now it seemed we didn’t.

So, a substantial chunk of Mist Classic parted ways from us and established Hallucigenia, where they could continue making computer art – and heck, real-world art too, why not? – in the manner to which they were accustomed. I always wondered… maybe if I’d acted sooner on admitting real-world art, I could have kept them under our roof and we could have maintained the momentum of an active core needed to continue operations. But we don’t have a time machine, so instead we get the historical record: Mist Classic stalled out in August of 1998 with me descending into HTML insanity, while Hallucigenia continued chugging along, and in October there it was: real-world art – they ran a gallery of Jack O'Lanterns in their artpack.

Since reforming, we’ve released three October artpacks, and they’ve only gradually been getting more and more Hallowe'eny – first, not at all in 2014, then substantially in 2015… this year, our October artpack was entirely Hallowe'eny. And here, in MIST1016, we just included a photo of an old Jack O'Lantern by Nail (that guy again?), a flaming skull (Ghost Rider or a Lost Soul from DooM? You be the judge!) so finally we can achieve a taste of the MIST1098 (well, at that time our naming convention would have looked like M-9810-B) that never was but might have been.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 9:57pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 8:47pm UTC

Compare & contrast: through the photographer’s lens, the photographer is a god! But externally, the photographer – focused on a dinky little machine, contorting their body to get just the right angle – is ridiculous and pitiable! And surely nowhere more so than the reviled selfie, stand-in for generational misogyny for years now!

Painter Delphine Hennelly is in the middle of a series of works exploring the theme of the selfie, but none of them carry a more unsettling subtext than this, the “Bathroom Selfie” featured in MIST1016, enshrining one girl’s attempt to (optimistically? foolishly?) squeeze beauty out of a context of larger-than-life squalor. (That’s funny, I’ve lost my appetite!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 8:47pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 6:32pm UTC

Covering all the bases, from computer art forms to fine arts to … well, one of the first of the modern art forms, photography! This MIST1016 landscape photo of Vancouver’s recent blood moon was taken by Diane Smithers (the watermark doesn’t lie!) and while photography is consigned to always play an unglamorous second fiddle role when in the same orchestra as Photoshop and After Effects, it can still be humbling when you realise that what you’re looking at on your computer screen isn’t purely an assemblage of electrons, but an actual representation of the real world! If she missed this shot after humping her camera gear up the staircase she couldn’t just reset the simulation!

(And for 604 appeal there, in the foreground, are the condos of Yaletown and Vancouver’s West End.)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 6:32pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 5:05pm UTC

On the fine art side of things, MIST1016 also included perhaps our first charcoal drawing, a gripping piece by Tom Heuckendorff of the band Soatoa: its title is “Spider face” and its edge is undeniable.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 5:05pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 3:18pm UTC

Four, four, four Shift-JIS drawings for the price of one! Our resident Shift-JIS expert, Kalcha, ordered these four Hallowe'eny characters to line up and get festive for MIST1016, and boy did they jump to it! Shift-JIS works like the ASCII art we all know and love, but the characters are not fixed-width – and they include Japanese ideographs, here seen only composing the body of the spider. (Fear not, those corner swastikas merely denote good fortune in an Asian context.)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 3:18pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 1:56pm UTC

We don’t want MIST1016 to overstay its welcome what with all of its Hallowe'eny contents, but at the same time… it’s the only thing holding back Christmas at this point, so we must persevere and press on. This morning we kick off celebrating this piece by the recently-rediscovered reNM8r which, let’s be fair, we can’t really get away with sharing at virtually any other time of year. A sublime exercise in lighting, I can’t really describe the effects of black magic being depicted here, but they resonate as intense and awesome. I would not mess with that witch and I strongly advise you do not either.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 1:56pm UTC

Instagram video by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 10:03pm UTC

Marc Ericksen was raking in the big bucks designing killer art for classic video game boxes back when most of us were in diapers. Our digital underground arose and fell, him at one end of the software ecosystem and us at the other end, and I gather that his game illustration run was near its end in 2003, when he drew this art for an ad for the Lucasfilm PS2 game RTX Red Rock in Gamepro magazine issue #176. As demonstrated in the secret package he mailed me three weeks ago, when the magazine finally ran the art, it was obscured behind a writhing mass of red squiggles, using a technique much used in software copy protection of the era (eg. in Loom), the underlying content revealed only when viewed through a(n attached) red cellphane transparency representing the bionic eye of the game’s protagonist.

Which is, huh, there’s a lot going on there. But the high and low is that no one out in the public has ever had a chance to get a good look at the underlying art before, and here – due to my onetime Quixotic quest getting box artists properly credited on Mobygames – in MIST1016, the veil was lifted and they finally had a chance to appreciate how it looked before the squiggles were applied.

Instagram video by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 10:03pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 8:13pm UTC

Nail is a fellow artscene traveller, a refugee from the ‘90s with a fondness for the activities we used to conduct but not many outlets for them. Somehow, he ended up singlehandedly generating 100% of the Mistigris iconography used in the MIST1016 artpack – the FILE_ID.DIZ and the logos on both infofiles. Basically, anything that said “MIST” was done by him… which isn’t bad for someone who was historically never part of it! Nostalgia by proxy!

Anyhow, the previous two of his pieces we examined were minor works – a FILE_ID.DIZ is necessarily constrained, while “the world’s smallest Mist logo” doesn’t really have the chance to bust out. But here, atop the newsletter, he went for the gusto and minted this wicked logo depicting some species of digital graffiti from Hell, balancing the whimsically looped “i"s with the Satanically inverted "G”. It’s a typographical tour de force, and really got us out the door on a Hallowe'eny foot, no doubt! Hats off and thanks again to Nail for ensuring that we didn’t head out into the world undressed 8)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 8:13pm UTC

[wpvideo 1qjXLToj]

While the version of the art included in our recent MIST1016 artpack was a static image, we all agreed that this was an optimal presentation for Ed “Starstew” Statsny’s Pixkeletal … somewhat akin to how it might be cranked out of a tractor feed dot matrix printer. I remembered how “back in the day” the old graphics viewing program CSHOW would present images that way, after performing some very processor-intensive calculations, no doubt! But CSHOW is unhappy performing in DOSBox today, and I had to go through a lot of MS-DOS graphics applications before I found one that could deliver the effect – that of underpowered limping – that I was searching for. Art isn’t always supposed to be easy! Even computer art. (ESPECIALLY computer art!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 6:20pm UTC

While there’s still a pumpkin on your porch and some candy wrappers blowing around in your wastebasket, here’s another sweet piece of Hallowe'eny computer art from MIST1016 – a pack of Pokemon going trick-or-treating, drawn by artscene stalwart Pinguino! The trick is that every trick-or-treater is the juvenile form, dressed as the adult form: Psyduck is dressed as Golduck, Charmander masquerading as Charizard, Shellder incognito as Cloyster, and Gastly anticipating becoming Haunter. Before we got our hands on it, a print of this was exhibited as part of the Meltdown Comics Spooky Art Show in Hollywood, hanging there for most of last month!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 6:20pm UTC

One of the major drivers for computer art has traditionally been working around constraints and limitations. In today’s world of processor-intensive creative techniques that are ONLY possible through the heavy lifting of banks of supercomputers, the idea may seem jarring and dissonant, but today’s retrocomputing enthusiasts (and, y'know, the demoscene) keep burning the torch for those eras where making a computer perform any trick, despite their gutless innards, was a feat worth celebrating.

So this little demonstration included in MIST1016 shouldn’t be brushed off as a bit crude – given 40 minutes on a Commodore 64, it’s likely that you would come up with quite a bit less! But given the geographical proximity of these hackers to our traditional heart and homebase of Vancouver, BC, and the undeniable spookiness of these 8-bit ghosts flying around, we knew we had to share this little piece of instant code with the world in MIST1016!

If you want to get this program off the ground on vintage hardware at home (or in WinVICE) you’ll need to know that making it run requires a typical step – LOAD “*”,8,1 – and an extraordinary one: instead of RUN, tell it… SYS 4096.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 1:45pm UTC

My old colleague Alex Cieslik (aka Phatal) from the Butchershop Floor art gallery continues blowing minds with his symbolically dense and ominous drawings, this one akin to some Dutch still life. When it first turned up I asked him if he was starting work on a set of Tarot cards, but no – this character stood for himself and needed no peers. The piece is named “2 Minutes to Midnight”, presumably after the Iron Maiden song, and … it’s intense.

Prints of the design (and shirts bearing the image) are available for sale; we’ll be serving you up a menu of goods for sale by Mistigris artists when holiday season is a bit closer upon us. But for now – it’s still Hallowe'en, at least for one more day!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 2, 2016 at 1:45pm UTC

Emerging ANSI artist LDA surprised us all with the submission of this… symbolically rich repast. Then, while seeking easy and obvious (but impressive!) animated transformations with which to populate our teaser trailer for the recent MIST1016 Hallowe'en artpack (which you can now enjoy in its entirety through your web browser at textmod.es, we surprised everyone by making it bloodlessly skip, jump, cavort and frolic for the entertainment and delight of bystanders! The version released in the artpack was the static ANSI art original, but we feel that this four-frame animation is its “best self”, so here you have another opportunity to appreciate it!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 9:58pm UTC

You’ve doubtless heard the claim here before: “quite possibly the smallest Mist logo”, “almost certainly the smallest Mistigris logo ever drawn” … one Nail, formerly of Fire and recently of revived ANSI art greatness, got tired of hearing these contested and unclear claims and resolved to settle the matter once and for all, with this – without any doubt, the smallest Mist textmode logo ever drawn. Are smaller ones possible? Theoretically. Would they amount to a hill of beans? Not likely. So we take our very little hats off and give him a teensy weensy round of applause.

(This logo was used atop the memberlist of the recent MIST1016 artpack release: small logo, long infofile!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 9:58pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 8:44pm UTC

MIST1016 truly had it all – and some things, it seems, it had twice! xer0 demonstrated handily that there’s more than one way to skin a Nintendo game! His earlier glitched-out Castlevania hirez piece (what a coincidence, and both of their nicknames being situated toward the end of the alphabet as they are threw them so close together… the pieces were fated to meet thus!) highlights flaws and errors rather than elegance and beauty, and in so doing penetrates straight to the heart of the subject: that something is fundamentally wrong with this whole bloody system!

(Have you tried blowing in the slot?)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 8:44pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 7:52pm UTC

Mist Classic alumnus Whazzit has been busy brewing up some unprecedented stylistic mash-ups, colliding HD photography of landscapes and architecture with ANSI art figures. He just released a bundle of them in the Blocktronics Blocktober artpack, but beating them out by a nose in MIST1016 was this, his Hallowe'eny take on the subject of Castlevania, Konami’s eternal video game series celebrating the conflict between the Belmont family and the vampire Dracula. Here we see Simon Belmont and Drac facing each other down across an elegant chamber, while a small flock of bats rest and stretch way up high.

(Of course, my favorite part is that there’s an entire roast chicken hidden inside the third pillar from the left!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 7:52pm UTC

teletextart:

#pixelart Ghost jokes, Granada ORACLE, 20th June 1982. Quick (semi-)shoutout for @Grim_Fandango himself on this page!

Captured by Jason Robertson http://twitter.com/grim_fandango

Source: http://archive.teletextart.co.uk and http://www.uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/

The perfect marriage of the graphical and the literary?

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 6:03pm UTC

A highlight of our recent MIST1016 Hallowe'en artpack was this second annual guest appearance by Raquel “ACIDT*” Meyers, a kind of textmode outsider art savant who happens to, happily for us, specialise in monsters! This piece of PETSCII (the textmode character set of Commodore’s home computers, most notably the C=64) art is entitled “Ambush”, and … I think that I’m looking at Thriller-era Michael Jackson at the bottom left there. Shamon!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 6:03pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 3:07pm UTC

Theresa Oborn was not the only star in the Mistigris constellation to be doing daily spooky drawings for #inktober – also, a ton of creepy work was flowing out of the pencil (I know, flowing from a pencil – creepy, eh?) of Brad “Bonemouse” Morris… this is not his first year at the monthlong challenge, and for MIST1016 we availed ourselves of two years’ worth of his doodles (alas, some of his strongest pieces were posted in the closing days of October, after the artpack was already “final”… but I suppose they give us a start on next Hallowe'en’s collection!)

This one was in response to the “Witchcraft Wednesday” prompt, and I can’t help but think that this might be Holtzman in an alternate reality Ghostbusters where it is the busters who are the supernatural creatures.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 3:07pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 1:51pm UTC

Starting off today’s offerings from the recent MIST1016 Hallowe'en artpack, here’s an ASCII art Gojira (Godzilla) from the desk of ldb, colourized by myself and used at the end of our infofile. I know he’s supposed to be flattening Tokyo, but isn’t he cute?

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 1, 2016 at 1:51pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 9:51pm UTC

This one just goes to show – there’s more than one way to depict a girl with bat wings! Theresa Oborn, better known for her grim sculptures, was one of two artists on our radar hyperactive in the commission of spooky drawings during #inktober. We captured… a great many of them for MIST1016, out yesterday!

While the cross is upside-down (shades of Manson, but that’s a swastika… which has no upside-down!), it’s worth noting that pentagrams in this orientation actually represent holiness: a good Christian, legs firmly grounded, arms held out in worship, head pointing to the sky. (Reversed, it becomes more of a goat’s head.) But the point is… isn’t it just adorable?

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 9:51pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 8:43pm UTC

We only just regained contact with him a couple of weeks ago, but Reanimator (now reNM8R if you will) has hit the ground running in the fashion of someone who fell into a cryochamber in 1995 and landed in 2016. Looking over his standard and NSFW galleries of MUX portraits, this particular piece jumped out as seasonally appropriate and so in it went to the MIST1016 Hallowe'en artpack, released yesterday: a lady might well go to the costume store in search of a scary bat costume, but sadly, all they’ll find is the makings for a “sexy bat” one. Well, fine then! Here’s your sexy bat! Just try not to, uh, visualise the logistics in too great detail. (In fact, the bat-woman represents a friend’s avatar giving the piece its name – “Dancing Echo”. But could I resist going down that road? I’m not made of stone!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 8:43pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 6:16pm UTC

Leaping lightly from medium to medium, the next dollop of cream skimmed from yesterday’s MIST1016 artpack is this oil painting by The Mythical Man entitled “Strange Weather”. Rumour has it here in Vancouver we’ve just set a record of 27 rainy days in October, but that is not as extraordinary as luminous airbornejellyfish… that only happens during El Niño!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 6:16pm UTC

[gallery]

teletextart:

Happy Halloween! Here is a gallery of artwork courtesy @horsenburger. http://twitter.com/horsenburger

You can find all these artworks and more in the Mistigris @mistfunk Halloween artpack, which is OUT NOW! https://artpacks.org/2016/MIST1016.zip ​

I was hoping to showcase them individually but as you can see I might well grow old and die before I catch up… And would you believe that he’s got a whole other batch of sweet teletext goodness queued up for release just a couple of weeks from now? The basic conundrum is that he appears to be able to draw them faster than I can celebrate them!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 3:12pm UTC

The tip of the iceberg… Steve “Horsenburger” Horsley has emerged from retirement (as a onetime teletext illustration professional) and has discovered that the machinery is still all well-oiled and the motions near seamless. (For a pittance, he would be happy to sell you a teletext portrait!) The hard part isn’t getting him to draw teletext, it’s getting him to stop! Here we see a consummately Hallowe'eny piece from his massive appearance in yesterday’s MIST1016 artpack… it is of course the Ghostbusters logo, and as I noted elsewhere – it’s nice to see that seemingly antiquated computer art forms such as teletext aren’t actually any more dated than their contemporaries in the world of comedy and entertainment! This rendition allows you to celebrate them both like it’s 1984 all over again!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 3:12pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 2:00pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, we have the chance to begin feeding you a highlights reel of our 22nd-anniversary MIST1016 artpack released yesterday! The idea is that it’s a spooky, Hallowe'en collection and so as soon as tomorrow, the pieces may feel a little less fresh. So here I am, on a spree to present them to you.

You saw this one yesterday in the pack-announcement post, but here it is all on its own in its full glory. Her name is Albina, and this desaturated Zodiac avatar is drawn by Elin Jonsson of Imaginary Games, creators of the fabulous mobile CCG Afterland. This was her first appearance with Mistigris (Elin’s, that is, not Albina’s… though that is also true) and her only offering in this particular artpack, but we have more of her dark and delicious art just waiting in the eaves to be shared with you.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 31, 2016 at 2:00pm UTC

[gallery]

Trick or Treat! Our Hallowe'en-styled 22nd anniversary (!) artpack (you may recall its awesome teaser trailer from a couple of weeks back) is officially released, and is now available for local download at http://bit.ly/mist1016 … there is some ANSI and ASCII art, by old hands and a few new names to boot, plus our ongoing investigations into other genres of textmode art (PETSCII, Shift-JIS, and a ton of teletext!) Also lots of #inktober sketches, drawings and paintings, plenty o’ varied hirez, even music… and of course it wouldn’t be a Mist pack without some lit!

                                            Mar 10
I passed a man.
He wasn't human.

Like a rapidly-decaying Jack O’ Lantern (yep, got one of those too!), don’t let it get past optimal seasonal freshness – grab the whole pack today and get your Hallowe'en started right!

(Featured in this post: FILE_ID.DIZ by Nail, Ambush by Raqel Meyers as ACIDT*, Happy Helloween by reNM8R, Albina by Elin Jonsson, Hellboy teletext by Horsenburger, Strange Weather by the Mythical Man, Haunted House #inktober sketch by Bonemouse, Click or Treat Shift-JIS by Kalcha, Just Because You Are Afraid Of Me Does Not Mean I Am Dangerous #inktober sketch by Theresa Oborn, Castlevania by Whazzit. (Oh yes, and the poem is by Crowkeeper.) But everything in this collection is Hallowe'eny, this is just a sampling to demonstrate its incredible diversity!)

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 30, 2016 at 1:20pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, we break from tradition by featuring a seasonal piece without any obvious Mistigris branding. This Hallowe'eny character is Lord Pumpkin, from Malibu Comics’ short-lived Ultraverse, and he was translated to ANSI art (for what I’m suspecting was the first and only time) by our own Nitnatsnoc in our very first artpack, released 22 years ago in October of 1994.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 30, 2016 at 1:20pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 29, 2016 at 2:53pm UTC

From the long-lost August 1998 Mistigris artpack comes this spooky scene, of Image Comics mainstays Spawn (poster child of local boy Todd Macfarlane) and Violator before a full moon, rendered in hirez using eerie Photoshop smudging. Due to the agonizingly protracted circumstances of its release, you may not have seen it before, but a belated congratulations are due to its creator, Knightmare… wherever he is!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 29, 2016 at 2:53pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 28, 2016 at 12:50pm UTC

Today on Mistigram, this thunderbolt-and-lightning-very-very-frightening-y newschool ASCII art Mist logo by Crystal Meth, originally drawn and released in July of 1997. Those letters… must not be grounded!

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 28, 2016 at 12:50pm UTC

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 27, 2016 at 1:12pm UTC

Doing our little bit to pump more mad science into the world at this time of year, here’s this bubbling test tube of an ANSI art logo from Blender #31 in 1997, drawn by Happyfish (who now ironically finds herself a real life mad scientist, compounding pharmaceutical substances into bubbling test tubes of her own) atop a strange story knitting together the target subjects of “scientists / running / down a one-way street”. There isn’t room on Instagram for the typo-riddled story, but if you insist, you can read it here.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Oct 27, 2016 at 1:12pm UTC

[gallery]

Separated at birth? Today on Mistigram: on the left, “Steampink” by legendary ACiD hirez artist (and wicked tattooist in his off hours) CatBones, featured as a guest in last year’s MIST1015 artpack… and on the right, the cover artwork to Jane’s Addiction’s 1987 eponymous live album. But only one of them has ASCII art printed on their midriff!

[gallery]

_________|`  ____,___|`_|   |___33
__, __, __, `(____-  ,_,'_, _______
#|'  |'  |'  |'   ,__,  `|' _|'  |#
@|___,___,____-__(____,__,'___,__,'@
(mistigris) (the first pack) (10/94)

Hats off to Eerie! Long celebrated as one of the most relentlessly creative visual talents of the underground computer artscene, he seemed to have long since moved on, never acknowledging the longago world in which for years he was its Picasso – his engine was merely stuck on overdrive, perpetually being driven forward, onward, with no opportunity for reflection in the rapidly-receeding rear view mirror. He has only just recently given us a nod with “33RULES”, the complete, collected artscene works of Eerie from April of 1994 to his last gasp in September of 1998 – one month later than we managed to hang in there, plus the nominal hiccup for ACiD-100. It’s all the glories of the artscene in a nutshell, a masterclass in a dozen different styles, and a valuable window into the endlessly creative brain of a true computer artist.

He was a key character in the foundation of Mistigris (look up top in his timeline, the first ANSI he’s made this century, minted in TheDraw – c'mon man, that big blue Pablo logo from our debut means you know better! – where you see the brief blip we occupy at the start of his long and illustratious scene career) because he started where we started: with the NWA (Vancouver’s New Wave Artists) / GRiP/AD (Quebec’s Graphic Revolution in Progress - Art Division) merger known as iMPERiAL. It was not to be long for this world, but it got our feet up on the rungs. Before that particular bubble popped, he got well established with his influential-in-naming trendsetting BBS Sarcastic Toaster. Concretely he gave inspiration, advice and technical assistance to Nitnatsnoc when our first WHQ BBS, The Screaming Tomato, was being set up, possibly even before we had any plans to run an artgroup out of it.

Our continuity with iMPERiAL was disappointing, as most of the handful of its still-active former members at that early juncture lent their support behind Fab One’s competing proposed artgroup, PATRiOT, later RAiD (and ultimately leading to Darkforce’s Integrity.) Thanks to the connection with Nitnatsnoc he lent material support to our bid for existence not only with (as you can see above – the FILE_ID.DIZ for our first artpack release! that’s ground floor foundational contribution right there!) actual artwork (despite already holding membership in RELiC – a dual-grouping conceit that would shortly explode with membership held simultaneously – if briefly – in ACiD, RELiC, SHiVER, UNiON and Katharsis ASCII) as well as, with Sarcastic Toaster serving as CHQ, a whole potted division of Quebec-area artists he brought along with him, including Zoltar, The Naughty Tycoon, Diamond Traveller and The Extremist – that last who would carry on the role and continue representing us in the 418 code right up to our closing months with Dionyzos and Enelf Daragard.

To reiterate: Eerie was only with us for three months at the end of 1994, but echoes and effects of his brief tenure were still being felt in the final stages of Mist Classic, in August 1998 nearly four years later. In the meantime, he’d made a legend of himself. We weren’t the start of the legend, but we were near the beginning. (And reflect that any of the umpteen groups in which he held membership at one point or another could likely gush for as great length as I have here about his tenure there!) Here in this post you can enjoy his brief intersection with us, and as a bonus… here, enjoy a couple of brief Misty pieces – his spot illustration of one of my lits, and his abrasive tracked song from the “lost” Mist/Fire Radiance music disk we revived last year – that didn’t make it into his collection!

And we’ll end on something particular to Mistigris that no other artgroup (you sure as heck would never have caught it in an ACiD or Integrity pack) would have allowed him to release: a “lit” of his own!

        bloody mary







    apoplexy of a bludgeoned country
    emanations
    corrosion
    the last feedback is reechoing in your destroyed voice
    wake-ups
    highway's ending here

    i could try
    yea, yea, i could try to shout
    to puke my bile by the pores of my skin
    to be dismembered
    i could try to weep
    but it's impossible
    cuz she's sticking in my landscape
    cornering my brain without being able to exit
    her humid body
    the haemoglobin dropping from her mouth

    we won't go anywhere
    there's nowhere to go
    i want her to stay
    i still want to force myself to watch her at 3am
    i don't want to rape anymore
    i don't want to kill anymore
    but without attacking i lose my only defence

    sweet impaled flesh
    sweet impaled flesh
    SWEET IMPALED FLESH

    i'm searching you
    no clue on where you could be
    bring me back home
    don't die anymore
    i want you
    bring me back in your bed
    bring me back i don't know where
    don't bleed anymore
    don't moan anymore
    i love you

    reclothe you
    don't be hurt again
    bring me back in your arms
    so i can still believe i'm innocent
    take me
    so i can still believe i'm
    eternal
    amen







        first motion




        i

    at some places on the asphalt
    agenda pages, dispersed
    a date another one
    pages splashed with some blood drops
    countries splashed
    only the corpse and the scandal are missing
    the newspaper car left the place
    "we all know, you, journalists
    only think about
    SATISFYING
    people" money
    justice was undone
    let's attack the city
    let's attack those people swimming in their drains
    mountains splashed
    valleys assassinated
    population drowning
    my mother swallowing

    scarlet rivers
    start back from the source
    no one would dare to regret
    ISN'T IT?


        ii

    beautiful terror
    beautiful panic
    beautiful fright
    spread on the surface
    enough to corrupt everything
    and confound everything in the burst

    RIVER
    into which the population was forced to
    CLEANSE itself
    beautiful dirty river
    hands immersed in this incandescent liquid
    incardinine

    BUT YOU TOLD ME BUT YOU ADVISED ME BUT YOU APPROVED ME BUT YOU

    when the widow
    nowhere else


        iii

    - The bath has been filled with blood. Write this down.
    - "The bath has been filled with blood."
    - Write this down too. The woman has been drowned in this blood.
    - "The woman has been drown in this blood."
    - She is now dead.
    - "She is now dead."

    edge
    yes of course i'll be waiting for you
    get here fast i can't wait to

    - We certified the decease. That's it. We don't have anything else
to do here. Let's go.

    where will you meet me
    with who


        iv

    memory you stab with the turpentine
    the creature has gushed
    poor frail innocence why
    did you manifested yourself
    beautiful and young so beautiful and young
    why

    no

    the sea is prolonging day after day
    already finished the story

    everything that happens unconsciously
    when the skin is naked
    when the soul is turned off
    when the conscience is dying


        v

    they were beautiful so beautiful
    so magic

    conversation recorded on magnetic tape
    one day they will know
    no
    yes no yes
    SET ME FREE

    a life without disappointment
    an existence without normality morality
    them girls without disappointment
    them girls without ignorance
    without naivety

    i tell you
    set me free
    yesb

    cold shower
    steaming bath



    now
    life can be
    while a moment of ecstacy
    while the absolute bombardment
    of hell hell you see
    real liberation
    from the soft cushion and the old bread
    from the paradise of the dungeon
    adjunction of liberty
    to the sad yesterdays that
    continue cant stop
    for an infinite deflagration
    of which the epicenter will be
    in my brain
    synapses will create the spark

    atomic garden
    atomic garden
    smell the radioactive flowers
    of an internal hiroshima


        un

    the steep bank
    the beach is empty
    drown yourself
    nobody is watching
    search somewhere else

    torn covers
    land of crimes
    buy my piece of asphalt
    speckled with guts

    a child, raped
    under a fire-orange sky
    the water the torrent rumbling faster
    way too fast

    i don't want to be the killer tonight
    drown yourself alone


        decimated i

    and this time
    at the window
    beheaded remorses
    a blood-stained body on the bed

    in a chapel
    administrative gods oracle
    the territory
    where the incestuous union will happen
    nothing on the terrain
    else than two naked bodies
    fucking under the heat of an eternal summer


        decimated ii

    the serial killer
    swimming in the innocence of his victim laying down on the mattress 
tied to the poles
    all she has is her cries

    the virgin is there she looks to the sky




        second motion


        northwest

    hallucinated amoebaes
    hear the stretch of the glaciers
    see the red disaster
    of the sacrificed aurora borealis
    of the infernal screen
    the one that will prevent you
    to think about the winter
    flames will reach your mouth
    and your tongue will decompose
    your cells will split up
    and carbonize the snow by their effervescence

    and i'll shit on your corpse


        insanities

    i'm coming here to take you
    we're going

    average catholic images
    life used to be moral normal with excellent reputation corporative 
parents javellized childhood full of lethargic laughs and microwaveable 
love
    no way baby
    the highway is just a second away
    my soiled hand in your sweet blond hair
    shut up


        instant departures neighbouring regions
        nocturnal celebrations with sulfuric acid

    seas of sand
    skidding continents
    cannibal torrent

    i'm building my non-existant soul
    from the wounds of my victims
    i lost my sight
    because of the vinegar
    i will never recover from my insanity
    even with the radiations
    even with the drugs
    every day
    every night
    even with the insomnias i will never leave the nightmare

    i went away
    i left the dump when i saw you weeping
    with an hatchet i broke the bones of my friends
    they shouted and they shut up, petrified
    i closed my eyes
    mist on hometown, usa
    grey pick-up on the nine
    six am

    come with me
    i'm going outta here
    i'm escaping to the states
    don't suffer for me
    i'll suffer for you
    come with me
    i'm the muthafucker who's awaitin you
    to fuck me kiss me fuck me kick me fuck me kill me
    to fuck me

    i crucified my reality
    i carved my acid truth
    i drowned my cephalic territories
    me, that compulsive liar
    i have no intention of repenting myself
    there's only you i can't lie to

    come with me
    i wanna get outta here


        exit 223

    i feel like dislocated by your presence
    viaducts pass so fast
    lamp posts and lamp posts
    ten-wheelers and ten-weelers

    you don't say anything
    i first thought about doing as if it was okay
    i even tried
    but the only thing i did was to destroy myself more
    when i saw you hurling in the rearview mirror
    when i saw you losing the last remains of your purity

    my heart is lacerated
    your moans are scourging me
    your bloody wrists are confounding with the explosion of my retin

    was it you i was waiting for?
    was it you i saw, yesterday, on the guard-rail
    vomiting the medication inoculated the day before
    the face demolished under a tide of industrial alcohol
    emerging
    desesperately seeking for air

    radio is broadcasting its aseptised fast-mood
    who cares
    in my head the ten-wheelers are still driving
    faster
    louder

    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields
    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields
    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields

    i love you
    on the back seat
    when you are dying

    and your finger on the trigger
    who cared



    I COULD HAVE I WAITED FOR YOU ALL NIGHT LONG LYING ON THE SNOW WAITING 
FOR TOMORROW EVEN IF I KNEW TOO WELL THAT AWAKING WOULD BE HELL ALL NIGHT 
LONG CARS PASSED WHILE I WAS WRITING YOUR NAME I LOST ALL MY HOPE NOW MY 
WORDS ARE LIKE KNOCKS OF HAMMER ON A FUCKING REALITY MADE FROM DREAMS HOPES 
FIGHTS BEAUTIES UGLINESSES I WROTE YOUR NAME I SHOUTED IT I MASTURBATED IT 
ALL NIGHT LONG SNOW FLAKES ONE AFTER ONE FELL ON ME AND BURIED ME I THEN 
REALIZED THAT MY WORK THAT MY SHOUTS THAT MY CALLS THAT MY DESIRE THAT ALL 
THIS DIDN'T EMBELLISH MY BURNED BRAIN I THEN DROWNED UNDER AN INTENSE 
VOLLEY OF SNOW BLOODY MARY I KNOW THAT YOU WON'T COME I KNOW THAT YOU DON'T 
EVEN EXIST I WAITED FOR YOU ALL NIGHT LONG KNOWING THAT YOU WOULD NEVER 
COME I WAITED FOR YOU WITHOUT EVEN HOPING YOU ALONE ALONE ON THE ROAD DID 
YOU HEAR ME DIE?