MIST0819 infofile by Cthulu / AK / LDA
MIST0819 infofile by Cthulu / AK / LDA
8:19
ak67
Greetings, everyone! Here we are again, continuing to plumb uncharted
territory. As weve already asserted, Mist Classic was never as active as we
are now, as regularly, for so long, so we really can no longer justify simply
pantomiming the old familiar motions of our youth, but must go off and ... do
our own thing! Well, OK.
Since its all new territory, were always breaking milestones these days,
but some milestones are more impressive than others, and can be represented
by long strings of nice, round numbers. This months milestone celebrates
having released over ten thousand individual artworks! Granted, a
thousand-odd of those are Horsenburger teletext screens, and another thousand
are Crowkeeper Tweets, but the other 529 of us have managed to come up with
the remaining eight thousand bits of connective tissue appearing in nearly 25
years worth of Mistigris artpacks. OK, thats only 15 pieces each, each of
us making only just over half an artwork annually since our establishment.
Perhaps I am scrutinizing the statistical side a little too closely? Its
misleading, because nearly half of those contributors only made one or two
submissions ever in the whole period. Please, allow me to elaborate... hey,
why are you closing my spreadsheet? The point is, the big odometer has
ticked over to five digits took from 1094 to 0296 to break four digits,
which, regardless of but how much of it was worth releasing? judgments into
the realm of quality, is still a formidable feat of quantity!
Best of all, ten thousand looks pretty neat in Roman numerals. LDA, its your
cue!
Theres actually a few ways they used to write that one out, none satisfyingly
possible in standard ASCII characters.
OK, one final piece of spreadsheet trivia: since reviving, Mistigris has
released nearly twice as much artwork as Mist Classic ever managed to get
out, and in fewer artpacks. All that with a considerably more moribund
community overall! I suppose that just speaks to supreme performance on
behalf of the curator, right?
All right, enough rolling around in numbers do it enough and you pick up
their smell, how better to covertly traverse computer realms? ... but I
digress and lets tell you a little something about this artpack beyond the
specific proportions of the wall that its brick fits neatly into. This
collection is unthemed! We swung that way back in June, and before then not
since last November and August. Time was that every artpack was unthemed!
This approach gives us an opportunity to vent artwork that for whatever
reason doesnt quite click with the other themes we engage -- making this the
mixed grab-bag collection of loose ends and miscellany. Sometimes you just
want to share something because it looks nice and your artist friends have
made it recently, you know? Theme isnt everything -- I mean, it is, but not
all the time. Does that make sense? No? OK, then lets move on. Thats a
good sign -- if I start making sense, youre in deep trouble.
I said miscellany above and, by gum, I meant it! Where else will you get
ZXGuessers collection of teletext screens celebrating train cars of the UK
railway? Do please note Axls PETSCII line of Masters of the Universe-
-inspired original action figures, profitably budded off of last months TV-
themed artpack! Blippypixel takes a break from the mind-blowing SF imagery in
favour of some illustrations deriving from the natural world, while poor
upper.case has been reduced by lack of inspiration to extrapolating pixelart
illustrations from random scribbles! And... OK, theres not actually all that
much to report, as most of the creations do not feature any kind of unifying
theme, as befits this collections official unthemed status! Are you sure you
dont want me to mine more insight out of the spreadsheet? No? Really? Okay,
moving along...
This month we feature creations by a couple of new contributors making their
artpack debuts, the pleasant pixelart of emmedoble and the refreshingly
outsider ANSI art stylings informed, I believe, by the recently discovered
MIRCart cadre of Picrotoxin. Please give them all a warm round of
applause! This collection also includes the last gasp of Webersso.ns fusion
bead work, the artist in the meantime having transitioned minting their
designs on the considerably quicker-and-easier-to-produce medium of pen on
paper. And back from the dead, the pixel artist who fell off the map
entirely just after turning our world upsidedown in December of 2017, Pixel
Art For The Heart, who swooped in during late December to give us our most
popular image of the entire calendar year! Weve been meagerly doling out
specimens from their back catalogue ever since, but bam! this month we hit
you with a whole flood of new vaporwave landscapes by the master!
You already saw and appreciated it -- indeed, for many, it is the only part
of this infofile they will ever see! -- but regardless I need to officially
draw your attention to the top of this screed, and again thank our guest
Alpha King of Blocktronics for once more generously endowing us with
indispensable FILEID.DIZ iconography -- in this case, some dope Mistigris
bling. Or... insert your own favorite m-word here. Macerate! Malaprop!
Molybdenum! Mythopoeia! Myriad! But I digress. Who will be the mystery
guest providing the iconography surrounding next months video game-themed
artpack, or will be be treated to a Cthulu special? I know, were all in
suspense. The important part is that were all very grateful when it doesnt
come down to that!
OK, enough internal affairs. Have our members been up to anything
interesting this month out there in the world? Bogged down in dealing with a
hypocritical IP troll, Horsenburgers renown has been nonetheless burgeoning,
lapping us on Twitter where he just surpassed some 2500 followers. We were
in on the ground floor with him, but lets be honest -- were just slowing
him down! In any case, in celebration of reaching the milestone, hes
launched a contest for his fans to write a text adventure game in the
Adventuron language, the grand prize of which is having your game fully
teletext-illustrated by him, just like with his recent graphics work souping
up a port of HAMURABI, the venerable grain-allocation game. And pertinent to
Mistigris traditions deeply entwined with the computer music culture of area
code 604, we are pleased to announce that the Vancouver Chipmusic Society is
presenting another instalment of their Overflow concert series later this
month, running Aug 28th at the Fox Cabaret, featuring performances by
DontBlinkOrYoullDie and Azuria Sky from the US, Bit.Umen from Italy and
local bleeper Dos Boot, plus visuals by DR!P. And though weve been a
little nominal on the musical front recently, do stay tuned for extensive
offerings from 604s tracker music scene to start popping up on the ArakNet
and PVM artscene audio streams!
Our apologies for our delinquency in releasing the new issue of Kithe...
weve now missed 2019s Assembly demoparty, so it wont make it out quite in
time for 20-year synchronicity, but we still aim to have it out by the end of
this summer. Well keep you posted!
As always, we have plenty of artpacks coming up, many of which will be
associated with specific themes. I already tipped my hand that one of my
favorites, video games, are coming up next in September, and of course you
can expect a hearty helping of the scary stuff coming up in October for
Halloween. As noted, well be celebrating our 25th anniversary ! in
November, and will be doing the predictable thing in December again. If
possible, wed love to do another ladies-only artpack coming up next March,
and exploring the new possibilities revealed by that shifting of the Overton
window, we would love to curate a Pride-themed artpack next summer
celebrating LGBTQ+ culture and creators! Our chances of fully populating any
of these collections from artists in our regular stable is ... slim, so
please, if you feel you might be able to come up with something relevant that
would suit one of these collections, or know someone who would, please dont
hesitate to look us up at info@mistigris.org!
Thats all for now, but it is seemingly inevitable that well be meeting this
way again next month! Until then, keep celebrating digital creativity!
Mistigris 2019: now, back to the spreadsheet...