Running on the last memories of fumes, Cthulu, founder of the 604-based
computer artgroup Mistigris, released a best-of compilation floppy diskette
of his groups four years of activity, Oct 1994-July 1998, at the Living
Closet event held at the Church of Pointless Hysteria on July 23, 1999, in
some hazy and nebulous attempt to bridge past glories with new avenues... an
effort that was ultimately a failure. By 1999, anyone who still /had/ a
floppy diskette drive in their computer as the trendsetting iMac launched in
1998 without one would be wary, to say the least, of taking home a diskette
of unknown provenance and loading it up into their machine, and only two of
the ten collectible limited edition! disks prepared ended up being taken
home.
The work curating the collection was not entirely a waste, as it was
circulated online to what remained of its traditional audience, and
represented the first release of several distinguished artworks Cthulu had
been sitting on through and past, ultimately Mist Classics lifespan.
Pointing to the future, the collection was also painstakingly manually
converted into a web gallery of sorts, demonstrating what Mist had attempted
and failed in the M-9808 artpack / website slow-motion car crash.
The Living Closet itself boomed and bustd, following the pattern established by
Mistigris, and for a long time Cthulu had neither of them in his life. Then,
on the occasion of Mists 20th anniversary, he found himself releasing
artpacks again. Two years later, he found himself releasing them on a
monthly basis!
Because one good nostalgia deserves another, by 2017 the time was found ripe
to celebrate the Living Closets past glories again looking at the 20th
anniversary of its own establishment the following year which, uh, here we are!, and for a private and personal synergy, Cthulu thought that it felt
right to release a second artdisk on this occasion -- again distributed on
floppy diskette -- consisting of a highlights reel of the leanest, meanest
works of computer art that had been included in Mistigris artpacks since its
revival in 2014, consisting of potential pickings from the following
collections:
MIST1014
M-9808
MIST1015
MIST2000
MIST1016
MIST1116
MIST1216
MIST0117
MIST0217
MIST0317
MIST0517
Theyre likely not all represented, but there are nonetheless included
some 73 artworks culled from their ranks, by the following local artists:
Arielle Olivier, bryface, cjb, Cthulu, Hailey, Happyfish, Ice Cream Emperor,
the Mythical Man, Pannekoekologist, Publius Emeritus II, Phatal, Quip, and
Tincat...
plus supporting works from remote guests Matt Matthew Hawaii, CCCFire,
Creonix Poland, Enzo Brazil, Heyoka UK, Horsenburger UK, Ideath
Oregon, Illarterate UK, jeepee Quebec, Jim Munroe Toronto, Kalcha
Japan, Kyo Hawaii, Lauren Martin Alberta, LDA, LDB Ontario, Maeve Wolf
Australia, Nail Germany, Polyducks UK, Raquel Meyers Sweden, Skavi,
Starstew Oregon, Stu UK, TeletextR UK, Theresa Oborn Seattle and
VileR Israel.
36 of them, all told! More people representing in this little floppy disk
than we would be seeing in person at the Living Closet art party! Strange but
true. Artforms represented include the traditional artscene staples of ANSI
art, ASCII art, RIPscrip vector art and high resolution bitmapped artwork as
well as tracker music and literature saved as raw text. Representing the
contemporary, expanded scope of Mistigris, were also seeing a great deal of
3-bit teletext artwork, some ShiftJIS and PETSCII representing the
retrocomputing textmode traditions of the UK, Japan and ... territories in
which the Commodore 64 was dominant, respectively. If you have difficulty
opening the files, some old hacker will no doubt be thrilled to take on the
challenge.
The necessary disclaimer is that of course not all our favourite pieces of the
past four years are in this collection -- works included here had to pass
/two/ criteria: first, we had to consider them the cream of the crop, and
second, of course they had to have small enough filesizes to fit in great
abundance on a floppy disk. After packaging the disk, we ran the files
through some optimizers, making for even more unused space available on the
floppy we didnt have time to pursue filling. But to make up for it, in this
archive, we have bundled in some documentary artefacts from the May 2017 art
party at which these floppies were distributed, just in time for its May 2018
follow-up.
Thanks for your continued interest in computer art: our tradition isnt
getting older and more irrelevant, its growing vintage and classic! Hats
off from Mistigris to the Living Closet -- may your highly improbable revival
prove as fruitful as ours did.
Cthulu, May 19, 2017
www.mistigris.org
Then we sat on the collection for a year, too wrapped up in the business of
releasing monthly artpacks to actually get around to sharing this. Whoops!
Cthulu, May 2018
computer artgroup Mistigris, released a best-of compilation floppy diskette
of his groups four years of activity, Oct 1994-July 1998, at the Living
Closet event held at the Church of Pointless Hysteria on July 23, 1999, in
some hazy and nebulous attempt to bridge past glories with new avenues... an
effort that was ultimately a failure. By 1999, anyone who still /had/ a
floppy diskette drive in their computer as the trendsetting iMac launched in
1998 without one would be wary, to say the least, of taking home a diskette
of unknown provenance and loading it up into their machine, and only two of
the ten collectible limited edition! disks prepared ended up being taken
home.
The work curating the collection was not entirely a waste, as it was
circulated online to what remained of its traditional audience, and
represented the first release of several distinguished artworks Cthulu had
been sitting on through and past, ultimately Mist Classics lifespan.
Pointing to the future, the collection was also painstakingly manually
converted into a web gallery of sorts, demonstrating what Mist had attempted
and failed in the M-9808 artpack / website slow-motion car crash.
The Living Closet itself boomed and bustd, following the pattern established by
Mistigris, and for a long time Cthulu had neither of them in his life. Then,
on the occasion of Mists 20th anniversary, he found himself releasing
artpacks again. Two years later, he found himself releasing them on a
monthly basis!
Because one good nostalgia deserves another, by 2017 the time was found ripe
to celebrate the Living Closets past glories again looking at the 20th
anniversary of its own establishment the following year which, uh, here we are!, and for a private and personal synergy, Cthulu thought that it felt
right to release a second artdisk on this occasion -- again distributed on
floppy diskette -- consisting of a highlights reel of the leanest, meanest
works of computer art that had been included in Mistigris artpacks since its
revival in 2014, consisting of potential pickings from the following
collections:
MIST1014
M-9808
MIST1015
MIST2000
MIST1016
MIST1116
MIST1216
MIST0117
MIST0217
MIST0317
MIST0517
Theyre likely not all represented, but there are nonetheless included
some 73 artworks culled from their ranks, by the following local artists:
Arielle Olivier, bryface, cjb, Cthulu, Hailey, Happyfish, Ice Cream Emperor,
the Mythical Man, Pannekoekologist, Publius Emeritus II, Phatal, Quip, and
Tincat...
plus supporting works from remote guests Matt Matthew Hawaii, CCCFire,
Creonix Poland, Enzo Brazil, Heyoka UK, Horsenburger UK, Ideath
Oregon, Illarterate UK, jeepee Quebec, Jim Munroe Toronto, Kalcha
Japan, Kyo Hawaii, Lauren Martin Alberta, LDA, LDB Ontario, Maeve Wolf
Australia, Nail Germany, Polyducks UK, Raquel Meyers Sweden, Skavi,
Starstew Oregon, Stu UK, TeletextR UK, Theresa Oborn Seattle and
VileR Israel.
36 of them, all told! More people representing in this little floppy disk
than we would be seeing in person at the Living Closet art party! Strange but
true. Artforms represented include the traditional artscene staples of ANSI
art, ASCII art, RIPscrip vector art and high resolution bitmapped artwork as
well as tracker music and literature saved as raw text. Representing the
contemporary, expanded scope of Mistigris, were also seeing a great deal of
3-bit teletext artwork, some ShiftJIS and PETSCII representing the
retrocomputing textmode traditions of the UK, Japan and ... territories in
which the Commodore 64 was dominant, respectively. If you have difficulty
opening the files, some old hacker will no doubt be thrilled to take on the
challenge.
The necessary disclaimer is that of course not all our favourite pieces of the
past four years are in this collection -- works included here had to pass
/two/ criteria: first, we had to consider them the cream of the crop, and
second, of course they had to have small enough filesizes to fit in great
abundance on a floppy disk. After packaging the disk, we ran the files
through some optimizers, making for even more unused space available on the
floppy we didnt have time to pursue filling. But to make up for it, in this
archive, we have bundled in some documentary artefacts from the May 2017 art
party at which these floppies were distributed, just in time for its May 2018
follow-up.
Thanks for your continued interest in computer art: our tradition isnt
getting older and more irrelevant, its growing vintage and classic! Hats
off from Mistigris to the Living Closet -- may your highly improbable revival
prove as fruitful as ours did.
Cthulu, May 19, 2017
www.mistigris.org
Then we sat on the collection for a year, too wrapped up in the business of
releasing monthly artpacks to actually get around to sharing this. Whoops!
Cthulu, May 2018
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