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