M-9808/DM-MISTO

 Mistigram: this ominous grey banner image of some magical urban catastrophe was made by Dracomage for us to use as a website header in the late '90s, just in time for us to be basically killed by the web, kicking the bucket in 1998 and being very dead until flowers started growing on our grave in 2014. At which point we relaunched a website and finally got a chance to put this image to its intended use, where it remains today! Released in the M-9808 artpack/website built 28 years ago this month but unseen, for the reasons just described, until 2015.

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Dracomage: the man, the myth, the enigma. It looks like sometime around the start of 1998, I was getting antsy for an injection of fresh blood – I could see the close of the 1998 high school year on the horizon, and knew that most of our members in that Grade 12 cohort would not remain with us following that life transition. So I began looking further afield; the artscene had eschewed us, so I had to draw in new computer artists from outside. What does that get you? Outsider art.

I found Dracomage in EFNet #poetry, while trying to branch out and build bridges, so naturally after I drafted him he primarily submitted… tracker music and high resolution art. He didn’t possess an easy mastery of the forms, but what he lacked in raw skill he made up for in enthusiasm and ease of access, with a nigh ubiquitous IRC presence.

We only showcase his visual work today (the blue iceberg piece is featured today on Mistigram, our Instagram feature), but in addition to his musical and literary sides, this lonely seaman, lost forever in the mists of time, also got points for trying (in vain) to get us up and online with mistigris.org circa 1998. (It didn’t happen, and indeed the attempt destroyed us, but he tried!)

If you know of the current whereabouts of Dracomage, please consider putting us in touch! Cheers.