Mistigram: and to help take the bad taste of that last one’s failure to understand consent out of your mouth, here’s @jellica_______ cleansing the palate with one more faux German erotic #teletext screen, roughly translated as “open your dirty mouth”. Nice teletext #ASCIIart textures in the background! This screen was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2NBmsxH
Mistigram: @xtcomics harnesses the power of #ASCIIart, enhanced with emoji, to tell the story of a man who didn’t know when to quit. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2VsomDH
Mistigram: Apam shares one more #ANSIart advertisement for Exotica BBS, the first #poledancing piece in our entire catalogue! This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2ECKt4C
Mistigram: and so we bid a cheeky adieu to the month of February, minds clouded with our unconventional desires. Here’s one more kaleidoscopic nude from @fractallearning, included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2Vs04cO
Mistigram: @theresaoborn offers up this drawing of a hypothetical birthday present never given, presented gift-wrapped for a real unicorn scenario. This drawing was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2BSRSv2
Mistigram: by far the most exciting thing in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection was the return of Quip (aka @psidreamdnb), the 4th most active Mistigris contributor of all time (even after a couple of decades off for good behavior), to #ANSIart after what’s got to be 18 or so years away from the fold. His submission dates back to period trends from when he left off in the ‘90s, featuring the charming tiger from Bill Watterson’s comic strip #CalvinandHobbes - clocked as the second most popular source of ANSI art inspiration ever, just after Spawn. Something else you never see anymore - a dope Mist logo at the bottom, so naturally we had to make it top the infofile.
We won’t be the exclusive home to his ANSI art going forward - I believe you’ll see him next in a @fuelwtf artpack - but it gives us great satisfaction in historical resonance to be the place where he resumed his artscene career - in the same place where it was first launched! https://ift.tt/2U8CxNW
Mistigram: there’s the old joke about the millipede/chicken hybrid responsible for providing KFC with its drumstick buckets… this mirrorball of gams can be seen as a trademark @fractallearning take on it, swapping in a woman in the place of the chicken. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SuOI5Z
Mistigram: exploring new frontiers in suggestive typography, @ty.p0 has used his typewriter here to redact some explicit carets and parentheses. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SvSw7n
Mistigram: @the_mythical_man always has more cardiac specimens at hand, but this dripping one has apparently sprung a leak. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2XqIEz7
Mistigram: frequent partners peace and love are both celebrated in this fusion bead design by @webersso.n, included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SoU0Ad
Mistigram: in a more pop art frame of mind, here’s a piece by @8bitbaba in one of his higher-bit modes, under which he often masquerades as “Tshirtbaba”. It was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2tC04eJ
Mistigram: before you invite her to open her gown, you must be prepared in the event of its revealing _recursion_ (which, I can predict in the case of most of you, you are not equipped to deal with properly.) This piece by @fractallearning was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2VmPe85
Mistigram: Apam has been studying his pin-up history - the cheesecake girl in this #ANSIart ad for Exotica BBS wouldn’t look out of place painted on the nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress conducting night sorties in Northern Italy. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2EwXMUn
Mistigram: @theresaoborn has a growth experience in store for Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Man. This painting was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2VmE4Aq
Mistigram: Q - what has 24 legs and no body? A- I don’t know, but @fractallearning is taking it for a walk right now! Years ago we released a spider with ballerina legs by Theresa Oborn (which hilariously Tumblr has since censored) which was, it turns out, just the prelude to this piece, included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SrcmQS
Mistigram: this colorful #ANSIart logo looks like it says “LOM” but if you tilt your head a bit it is revealed as “SM”, in a graffiti-ish idiom, drawn by Quip for Mr Flibbles’ BBS Stupidmop. It was released 21 years ago this month in the M-9802 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2U33Itu
Mistigram: it took me a little while to puzzle through just what this #ANSIart logo by Bleak read earlier this week (tagging artworks at @sixteen_colors) and I may as well share the secret with you: Viper Couriering. It was released 23 years ago this month in the MIST0296 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2IAbud2
Mistigram: @theresaoborn plumbs the uncharted depths of the abyss using this custom bathysphere. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2E82uql
Mistigram: yessir, we’re getting closer to spring and love is bustin’ out all over! Can’t you just feel it grab you by the heartstrings? Really? Jesus, that’s just a metaphor. OK, drop everything and head to the hospital immediately! This distressing image is by the amazing @pinguinokolb and was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2E4p3vP
Mistigram: if you just can’t get enough of these stimulating big pixels, @horsenburger has been running a series of erotic #teletext screens - or teletexxxt as he puts it - for exclusive enjoyment of his Patreon supporters. You’d better take him up on his offer as I don’t believe these particular goods can be sources anywhere else! This promo screen was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2txjrW7
Mistigram: #PETSCII! Now that we have your attention… @axltm is still taking a deep dive into the aesthetic of the C64 character set (some of it, unlike this piece, actually drawn himself), but even though some of this month’s posts have fallen afowl of the new robo-censors on Tumblr (along with some hilarious algorithmic failures) as you can see the artist has here courteously pre-redacted the work. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2tzyQFl
Mistigram: if you prefer a little less abstraction, you might enjoy this drawing by @the_mythical_man. Personally, I find the pixelated shadow pattern most fascinating! This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2Ep3tDT
Mistigram: @kalchano gets philosophical in this abstracted #Shift_JIS outtake from Boxing Helena. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2It5aUM
Mistigram: explicitly in the European tradition of #teletext ads for erotic chat lines, by glitching up the colour palette @jellica_______ also manages to evoke North American memories of scrambled adult programming on premium cable TV channels. Thus by virtue of its presentation, some mundane subjects - a hand, a woman’s face - take on new, tawdry life. This screen was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2Ep2Lqd
Mistigram: with these kaleidoscopic @fractallearning images, you always understand what you’re looking at in a general way, but sometimes it takes a little puzzling to determine which part of it you’re looking at, and from what angle. This reflection was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SV1YpX
Mistigram: getting a little looser and sketchy now, here’s another patented @the_mythical_man heart, this one emphasising stresses on the ventricules like some kind of technical schematic…which is well as it should be, as the heart has to be strong enough to sustain incredible pains, traumas and burdens. This one also appeared in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2SNAEK8
Mistigram: OK, so the puns are dad joke level, but that’s a nice #ASCIIart heart in @xtcomics’ emoji comic strip here! You can find this piece and a couple of others by the artist in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2BKHBky
Mistigram: @theresaoborn knows also that there’s more than one way to dress up a heart: this one is just on its way out the door to goth night. This drawing was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2TYCGn9
Mistigram: @the_mythical_man has more hearts to share - perhaps a whole suit of them! If you’ve ever loved something with the passion of an exploding star then this might be the piece for you: “Nova Heart”. It was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2BJ1QiA
Mistigram: love may be what inspires us to get up in the morning, but coffee sure helps to make it happen. Here @8bit_poet celebrates both at once with this #pixelart piece of a heart drawn in latte foam. This was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2TYUbUp
Mistigram: we could do a whole day of nothing but posting art on cardiac themes by @the_mythical_man, but we like to mix it up a little. We start with one of his drawings, “Heart Almost In Hand”, from this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2XcK93Q
Mistigram: I suppose we aren’t going to find more fertile ground than the table we’ve just set, so here’s something for the ladies - a call for submissions for our March artpack collection. The fellas are taking a big step back allowing us to make our March artpack a platform for women and femme creators in honor of IWD. Full details at http://bit.ly/2TXZN0Y http://bit.ly/2BIMhXX
Mistigram: did someone say “beefcake”? You can’t beat the #BurtReynolds Cosmopolitan centrefold that prompted the creation of Playgirl magazine! @theresaoborn drew this memorial homage, which appears in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2DTZ5eD
Mistigram: and now, a slab of beefcake to balance out the cheesecake! This #ASCIIart composition, “s3nd lofi nude5”, comes from the desk of @ty.p0 (where an uncensored version might exist… or is the original model simply really that hairy?), and was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2SKVF8i
Mistigram: a project that waited most of a decade to be realized, Mist Classic alumna @tillie.king finally finished hand-embroidering this femme at long last, bequeathed to a sex worker who will appreciate the coded symbolism behind the handkerchief’s colour. Trust me, after their glad work is done, brows will need to be mopped! This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2TYmfXM
Mistigram: @jellica_______ continues along in the long German tradition of erotic #teletext with this reclining figure, painted with a dreamy pastel palette from the expanded teletext 2.0 standard. This screen was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2SIt9Ed
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: “computer art” made by women (you know who you are) for a March 2019 artpack release
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was the first programmer, designing software for Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine. The first use of punch cards for information storage were to communicate pattern instructions to Jacquard looms, automating the traditionally female labour of textile manufacturing. Through the Second World War and the space race, “computers” were women maths whizzes, crunching through ballistics equations by the roomful. Evelyn Berezin invented the word processor in 1969. Susan Kare was responsible for defining the modern GUI, first in her interface design for the Macintosh classic and subsequently for Windows 3, OS/2 and NeXT. Even the first superstars of ANSI and ASCII art for crying out loud, Ebony Eyes and jgs, were women.
So where were all the women in the digital underground of cyberspace? Here, as anonymous names on a screen, minds floating in a fishtank, where we were free from the drag factors of sexism, racism and ableism, was our opportunity to remake society, addressing its injustices and imbalances. I don’t know what you did, bros, but you done messed it up.
Back in the ‘90s, the underground computer artgroup Mistigris bucked the trend and proudly had ladies among its membership. (In retrospect, for exceptional reasons we won’t bore you with here, we determined that we had most of the ladies of the underground computer artscene among its membership.)
This year, in time for International Women’s Day, we’d like to undertake an alternate history exercise and envision, with your help, just what a computer artpack consisting exclusively of contributions by women artists – something unprecedented despite its reverse being bog standard – might look like. Now all we need is contributions by women artists.
FAQ:
Q: ??! What the heck’s an artpack?
A: Wikipedia does a pretty decent job answering that one.
Q: What should I make my art about?
A: I fell for that one once – I thought that as the standard approach and subject matter of the digital underground derived from dudely pop culture power fantasies (the social rejects of cyberspace: reproducing the very systems that they felt oppressing them in wider society), it might be interesting to celebrate cultural artefacts more traditionally coded as “girly” (a different problematic can of worms), eg. less Spawn, more Sailor Moon, less Iron Maiden, more Tori Amos, less Henry Rollins, more Jane Austin – but forget it: the purpose of this platform is not for a man to tell women what kind of art to make. Butch, femme, cyborg, we are just here to further disseminate whatever art women would like for us to share. Try us.
Q: What mediums and styles do you support?
A: Though to lesser extent in Mistigris, artpacks have traditionally been all about the textmode art (ANSI and ASCII art specifically), to the exclusion of virtually everything else. We’ve already extended our interest in the ANSI art aesthetic to pixelart, and our interest in pixelart to its real-world cousins made in cross-stitch and fusion beads, which already has us extended deep into the territory of creative women… we’ve just not enjoyed much success reversing the flow and importing the stuff back into artpacks, where we feel they belong. There are whole realms of creative work like fashion and dance, often dismissively written off as part of the domain of the feminine (like cosplay and Fortnite, right?), that no one has ever even bothered to attempt to represent in a computer artpack. What’s up with that? But we’re not solely fixated on arts and crafts – undoubtedly the ladies in STEM fields have come up with VFX, algorithms and programs that would blow us away (supposing we were smart enough to appreciate the genius we were witnessing, you might need to dumb it down a bit.)
Q: When’s the deadline?
A: IWD is on March 8th, we hope to have the collection released by March 4th 2019 at the beginning of its week.
Q: That’s not much time!
A: Sorry, I spent a lot of time pursuing individuals I’ve worked with historically where I should have been casting wider nets. We’re not expecting people to come up with new works just for us, but rather to toss us existing tasty tidbits from their portfolios for us to hype up and rebroadcast.
Q: What’s the payment like?
A: While this venture and undertaking is well worthwhile of grant support and sponsorship, we hit on the theme too late in the cycle to line up any compensation. Contributors to underground computer artpacks are not traditionally paid (maybe in warez, and definitely in eliteness points), so for what it’s worth, this is one regard in which there is no gender pay gap. The other eleven months of the year, it’s the gents who are largely filling artpacks for free.
Q: I’m a dude of the manly variety who loves what you’re doing here, and obviously I don’t fit your submittor criteria for this collection. How can I help?
A: If you’ve got a passion for this aesthetic and have a sister, wife or daughter who’s expressed interest but has never found a sufficiently supportive entry point into this weird world, you could put a word in their ear. Failing that, you can of course repost credited art by woman creators and buy their work. Most importantly, don’t allow them to be mistreated in the workplace or on social media by toxic dudes.
Q: You’re the same crew who were just running pieces of cheesecake art for Valentine’s Day?
A: It’s true, we are vast, we contain multitudes.
Q: Is that really the best ASCII art taco you could draw?
A: The Unicode character set
offers some better options.
Mistigram: @axltm seems to have recently discovered the #PETSCII aesthetic, and has been rigorously investigating every aspect of its practice inside and out. Or, in this case, both: looks just like a nightvision heat map of the subject of our prior post. As her top is not emanating heat, it does not appear in this mode. Axl’s artpack debut was with a couple of pieces in this month’s MIST0219 collection. http://bit.ly/2Sdvxhf
Mistigram: this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection included several Apam #ANSIart screens of cartoonish women in cheesecake pin-up poses, all in promotion of Exotica BBS. http://bit.ly/2Sb09zU
Mistigram: we can’t know for sure what this heroic image depicted before @fractallearning turned it into kaleidoscope fodder, but despite all intents I imagine we can reasonably conclude that it was probably less interesting. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2XbSNQq
Mistigram: another drawing to cap off our very botanical day here, we present @theresaoborn’s Blackberry Boys. Careful you don’t get caught on their prickles! This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2DRMoAH
Mistigram: She loves me, she loves me not… since we’re all floral today, here’s a drawing of a shocked flower by @the_mythical_man, included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2NcKgYH
Mistigram: one final rose, this one is a #fusionbead construction by @webersso.n, who will be making a big swan song in next month’s women-only artpack… but this one was released in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2T0LSde
Mistigram: from the textmode workshop of @ty.p0, here’s the most minimalist rose possible, such as one might have found preserved between punch cards. This piece was released in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2S8TCp2
Mistigram: not just a #pixelart rose, this screen by @mentalpoppixels promotes a romantic game, “Blind Date”, made by Solscape Studios, illustrated by them and available for sale now on Steam and itch.io! This screen appeared in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2X9Nxwk
Mistigram: would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? The fragrance of this shredded and spliced remixed #glitch varietal might smell like a cross between antiseptic, an industrial shredding machine, and a pot of rosehip tea. It is the creation of @192.168.10.13, entitled “Plucked”, and was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2DSeHzk
Mistigram: Vanon was among our ranks for so brief a time, this piece dating to just after the end of our Mistigris World Tour period in the MIST0897 artpack collection, we never got a chance to inquire just what this piece was about. But on the basis of its title alone, “Devil In Her Panties”, it warranted inclusion as poetry. http://bit.ly/2GLsdaU
Mistigram: @fractallearning needs you to know that no matter how busy and kaleidoscopic things get, they never skip leg day. This piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2TTsTPa
Mistigram: @ty.p0’s typewriter piece here testifies to the truism that just because something is sexual does not necessarily make it sexy. This was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2BGLHKp
Mistigram: @dos_grog is just about ready to leave all of this awkwardness behind us. This #pixelart piece was included in this month’s MIST0219 artpack collection. http://bit.ly/2TLH74B
