ARTDISK-/CHL_W1

 Mistigram: only ever seen in the "best of Mistigris" floppy diskette digest distributed at a #LivingCloset variety show July 23, 1999 at the Church of Pointless Hysteria, here is an example of the impulsive "real-world art" practice that wound up exploding from Mistigris into #Hallucigenia in '98, #asemicwriting and imaginary semigraphics character sets inscribed by Mist weirdos with #sidewalkchalk on cobblestones at the Word on the Street festival at the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, probably circa 1997. The fancy boot is Crowkeeper's, and the photo was very likely taken by Etana.

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Today on Mistigram, a tiny, almost throwaway monochrome high-ASCII logo Blocktronics artist (and TeklordZ veteran) Mattmatthew tossed off to help us let people know our 20-year reunion artpack, MIST1014, had left the gates… nearly two years ago now. (He also put in a number of other necessary labours, up to and including setting up this very Tumblr to act as our most substantial pulpit.)

It wasn’t included in the artpack in question, but was quickly repurposed to act as FILE_ID.DIZ for the re-released “best-of Mistigris” Living Closet artdisk, finally being shared with a wider audience since its failed distribution on floppy diskette at an art party back in 1999

With a nip, a tuck and a tweak, the logo (the elegant “M” massive and masterfully designed, leaving plenty of room for almost occult ornamentation, the “Mistigris” perhaps the smallest possible rendition of the full group name in only two rows of characters) was also put to work extensively in the MIST2000 Treasure Hunt, including this colour-cycling variant reserved for the grand finale… which to this point perhaps no more than three people have ever seen.

ARTDISK-.ZIP Mistigris 'best-of" compilation (re)release!

Tonight, after 16 years of dormancy: the second monthly public Mistigris release. ARTDISK-.ZIP was a “best-of” compilation – additionally featuring 13 previously-unreleased works – designed to act as a survey study for outsiders to the artscene, demonstrating a wide spectrum of different minimalist (and filesize-thrifty) approaches to computer art… and distributed in a limited edition of 10 floppy diskettes at a groovy real-world art party back in 1999: “The Living Closet” at “The Church of Pointless Hysteria”.

Only two of the ten floppies were taken home. (A new world record for least-viewed artpack?) During a premature attempt to rebuild Mistigris – before it had quite hit rock bottom – the disk was hand-converted into a web-viewable gallery in 2001 hosted on free (and subsequently withdrawn) Australian webspace and seen by roughly nobody… so the web gallery has been folded in to this archive as well for your local browsing convenience.

Technically a 15th-anniversary re-release – if you were one of the two lucky disk-takers – for the rest of you this archive represents an opportunity to enjoy the 13 hitherto unseen works and to renew your enjoyment of the other archive contents which, rest assured, you likely haven’t perused in quite… some… time.

bit.ly/artdisk

(Coming up next: the 20th-anniversary re-release of the long-unavailable seasonal music disk The Bells Of Yule – remastered!)