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The kanji, ane mayhap thwart ambergris. #iambicpent ^^ bot-generated poetry. I always told you lit was "computer art"! Finally, for once, I'm in an unusual position of being able to just get on with it and tell you all about the great stuff in this artpack without first having to sum up two decades of technological innovation. Since reviving in 2014, there's been a great deal of necessary "here's where we left off" and "in case you forgot or never knew, let me explain ANSI art and BBSes" in infofiles. But here we are, and for the first time since 1998, we've released two new artpack collections in two consecutive months. (In fact, it's probably been around that long since ANYONE released two artpacks in two consecutive months!) So without further ado, I consider you all up to speed and am pleased to introduce to you: the present. It's an uneasy kind of place to be, a place that we really couldn't have anticipated being a mere three weeks ago. Geopolitically, I mean. And despite the best of intentions and extensive preparations, delays and obstacles kept piling on: starting with an innocent baby dumping her mother's full mug of coffee on a laptop and simply escalating from there -- the next stop was the decapitation of my AC adaptor... and so forth. But despite the clear and present disapproving signs the gods of antiquated electronic culture have shown me repeatedly, nothing short of a meteor landing on my house will hold back this enormous artpack, containing over 200 megs of art (representing over 200 individual artworks by approximately 60 participants) ... and even if that giant space rock does light upon my roof, the relevant files are mirrored in the cloud. But if you're reading this, it's incontrovertible evidence that the artpack managed somehow to escape the event horizon of the black hole computer art creates on my hard drive when accumulated in sufficient quantities. Putting this one together has been quite a bit more work than I anticipated, due to what could be characterised as "a nice problem to have": excessive participation! I did it again -- I invited everyone to take part, got antsy waiting for nearly six months without hearing of much interest, and went out to rustle up art on my own so as not to end up in the humiliating position of being committed to presenting a ghost town of an artpack. Only once I had secured substantial substitute artpack contents (after enormous quantities of hustling from some very unusual and unlikely sources) did everyone I initially invited return with submissions, yielding at least TWO artpacks' worth of material. (Three or four is more like it; MIST1016, which you really ought to check out if you haven't yet, was just a little exercise in venting the spooky late-October content we'd accumulated for a thematically coherent collection before this, the main attraction, hit the stage. But even freed from the eerie weight of those pieces, there's just ... well, I don't want to damn myself by saying "too much", so I'll just say: this artpack contains much of a muchness. I'm going to go on a bit of a whiz-bang highlights reel grand tour of the artpack's contents here, but before I do: my sincerest apologies for failing to represent absolutely every participant here -- there is a place where every contributor is celebrated, and that place is the memberlist file, which you will probably find right next to this one. If this was just that comprehensive, it wouldn't be a highlights reel, but a bonsai artpack, completely replicated in an unsatisfying miniature textual form. So if I don't mention your contributions here, fear not -- they will, in time, be revisited in painfully exacting detail as part of the daily Mistigram post on four flavours of social media. 2016 has been a year of increasing outward-facing for Mistigris -- when I revived the crew in 2014, I never expected that anyone would be interested beyond our own (not inconsiderable) pool of historical alumni. But no fewer than three artists appearing in this artpack -- Freddy43, Creonix, and cccfire -- represented Mistigris (placing and winning outright in a few categories) before judges and committees at several demoparties this year, a number unmatched since our demoscene peak in 1997! In addition, we were able to achieve some outreach at the recent Syntax Party by having the trailer for this artpack shown on the big screen (so in case you're wondering, everybody, just like to all the listeners who heard our retrospective on midnight radio with the Art of Beatz -- this is it, the artpack whose release we were promoting is finally here. We jumped the gun a little bit in getting the word out, but we hope that you haven't grown cold in waiting for it!) Hopefully 2017 will see more of us working together on projects external to That Giant Artpack Every Autumn. We'll see. Because what we now see as the classic mediums of the '90s artscene weren't at that time conspicuous exercises in nostalgia but rather... just doing what we could with the tools we had available... we have been continuing along in our campaign to include in our artpack collections not just "classic" computer art styles of tracker music and textmode art but also current and contemporary mediums for computer art: though the Pok‚mon Go landscape photography fell though, we do feature one literary work translated into emoji (an undertaking we'd been actively soliciting since before last year's artpack!) and a distinctly unsettling Snapchat face-swap. Do what you can with the tools that you have! We've got found poems and readymades! Further trying to correct the mistakes Mistigris made in 1998 regarding the inclusion of "real world" artforms, we continue expanding their representation here with collages by Arielle Olivier, an #inktober comic by Claire Roberts, the drawings of Theresa Oborn, photography by Diane Smithers and Dubaiwalla, an entire suite of Delphine Hennelly's deeply intriguing "selfie sister" paintings (don't blame her, I belive I came up with that label) in which technology is not the medium but the subject, with further splendid paintings by Jenn Ashton, the Mythical Man, Maeve Wolf and Unseen Fate... plus the eye-popping canvas colour studies of Nick Lakowski (who has fond memories of the BBS era that are totally unrepresented in his current work), each piece of which comes with a bonus poem -- its title! You will already have noticed an extraordinary thread running through the music in this year's collection: a rich vein of accordion-playing runs through the first few tunes here, but far from trying to crassly shoehorn my unrelated hobbies in to an artpack, I think that these recordings effectively capture compelling aspects to electronic musics -- in this case, the Square console RPG soundtracks covered by An Historic and Anton van Oosbree's squeezebox rendition of a Daft Punk song. These are the kinds of ideas I would have eventually snuck into my artpack myself, but happily they have already done the heavy lifting for me. And it's not all accordion (ooh, but did you see the poster art for my accordion festival Elin Jonsson of Afterland fame allowed me to include here? wow!); while the basic electronica types managed to somehow avoid us this year, there are several pieces of straight-up circa-1998 classical computer music from Orangeboxman, plus ... whatever the impeccably-named Desolation Sound is (Soundcloud bio reads "Plunderphonics and Folk-Noise", that works!) and a sadly timely release of Perpetual Dream Theory's 2006 tribute to Leonard Cohen. (It was a catastrophic year all around, with no fewer than two tributes -- non-musical -- to David Bowie, whose death kicked of the year and started everything unravelling.) Casting our nets wide resulted in ensnaring more than a few artscene outsiders, few further outside than Chris Godber, whose included game "Glitch" marks the first Mistigris game release since 1997 (let's... not count MIST2000's inclusion of 1998's Onyx Arcade II) -- conspicuously still in the interactive fiction idiom where we left off with Kithe #14! -- plus his paintings and intriguing conceptual pieces from his colleague from "The Tunnel" Jamie Stantonian. Speaking of outsiders -- all those lits we released back in the day weren't by and large submitted to us by artscene participants, they were just postings intercepted on local BBSes and echomail networks that were captured and (sometimes) requested for reprinting. In a sense, that was probably the strength of our lit division: they had no interest in being part of the art scene, they just wanted to produce interesting writing. It is much the same today: I have begged permission to reprint plenty of micropoems (seemingly all most people can get txted out with their thumbs on their phones today) pertaining to technology and the everyday experience of life in our traditional stomping grounds of Vancouver, plus a substantial body of micropoems by our classic colleague Crowkeeper culled from Twitter which take on a qualitative transformation into a species of literary monument solely by virtue of their sheer quantity, an entire year shared in stark moments of observation and introspection in the most poetically affected diction imaginable. Needless to say, it's a major achievement. (Also make sure not to pass up Chris Brayshaw's poem: the man is the proprietor of Vancouver's best bookstore, he had no choice but to become literary purely by osmosis.) It's easy (too easy?) to skip over the lits (I know you do; it was the big shocker when we saw the file-by-file traffic breakdown of MIST1014 from sixteencolors) but one thing that can't be overlooked or ignored is the massive footprint felt here of the ANSI-like textmode visual medium of teletext, which basically dominates this artpack -- first with a few strategically chosen pieces by last year's breakout star Illarterate, here celebrating the characters of the British comix tradition, but then with a seemingly endless promenade of virtuous pop culture cameo appearances from his alphabetically adjacent colleague Horsenburger, who mints more of these on a daily basis... and we've only just skimmed the cream! For the love of God, someone please slow him down a little bit with some paid commissions! Speaking of paid commissions, it's truly gobsmacking to observe just how far Lord Nikon's typewriter art has progressed in the 13 months since we released his first experiments into the ASCII-like artform. The photos are high resolution for a reason, allowing you to zoom way in to appreciate the realms of detail he implies with individual keystrokes. As far as other textmode art fellow travellers go, we are again graced with further Shift_JIS art by Kalcha, whose diverse spread of interests all receive the laser-like intensity of his conversion focus. And due to purely alphabetical circumstances, we find a bizarre concentration of ANSI art nearly at the very end of the alphabet... where we switch tracks and highlight the evocative works of Yaimel Lopez, perhaps the first time an artpack has ever featured work from Cuba. Bienvenido, Yaimel! Other MIST1116 highlights might include reNM8r's seemingly time-travelling reappearance, as if picking up seamlessly from his Mist Classic work in the mid '90s, Starstew's Picasso-like diversity of styles demonstated to be on tap, and xer0's glitch works -- as emblematic of the computer art of today as ANSI art was of 1994. And finally, a special thanks to Nail for (again!) providing the textmode iconography needed to allow these artpacks to happen according to the prescribed rituals of the old artscene traditions! Anyhow, I could go on forever (and I will, just you watch our social media accounts!) but this isn't just about my ability to write at a marathon pace -- any readers still with us deserve some kind of nominal conclusion to reward their patience with. So thanks for hanging in here and indulging us, we hope that you find much of interest within this collection. Will we be doing monthly artpacks from now on? Ha ha, that would kill me. But hopefully we will find a happier medium, some golden mean of regular activity throughout the year rather than an annual violent spasm of art discharge. Anything is possible. -- Cthulu, Nov 23, 2016 [ 8o X 5o ] REMiXED  .----------------------------------------------------------------------------. |/././. /| |___/(____ þ __/(_ _____ þ ____/(___________ þ _/(__ _ __ | | __ \\_______ \_ÜÛ_/ _//_/\\_ÜÛ_\\//_ÜÛ_\ __///_ \/ | | \/ / / /____ \_ _/________ \_ | | _ _/ / // / _/ \\_ \_ // / / sI | | \\\_/ / _\____/ /____\_/_ | |IIIII/__/___/I\_ _/I\____/I\_ _/I\____/I\____/_ /IIIII\____/I\_ _////III| |iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii)/iiiiiiiiiiii)/iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii)/iiiiiiiiiiiiiii\(iiiiiiii| |||||||||||||||||/|||||||||||||/||||||||||||||||||/|||||||||||||||||\||||||||| `----------------------------------------------------------------------------' .----------------------------------------------------------------------------. |=ðððððððððððððððððððððððððð=======================ððððððððððððððððððððððððð=| |ðððððððððððððððððððððððððð mISTIGRIS (/) tEXT aRTS ððððððððððððððððððððððððð| |=ðððððððððððððððððððððððððð=======================ððððððððððððððððððððððððð=| `----------------------------------------------------------------------------'  Mistigis 2016: Anything is possible! If you'd like to work with us or just let us know what hoopy froods you think we are, please don't hesitate to look us up at mistigris.org or on social media. (And no infofile would be complete without... greetings to Blocktronics, Break, Galza, Impure, Dezign, Hornet, Hack Canada, pen15 (see? I'm paying attention!), the Vancouver Chipmusic Society, Concrete and TABNet... iLF is gonna rock ya!) SAUCE00MIST1116 Infofile Cthulu, j33p33, SkavMiSTiGRiS 20161124­ZP IBM VGA