²² ÜÛÝ ÜÜ Ü²ÛÝ Üß ß ÜßÛÛÝÞÝþ ÜÜÜÜ ß²ÝÛÛ ßÜ ÜÜ Ü²ß ßÜ ß²² ²² ßßÝß°²Ý Þ²ÝܲÜ ±±ßÛÜß Ü ²°Ý ÜßßÜ ßÞ°°ß²Ü ÞÝ ÞÜßÜÜÞ°°ßß Þ ²ÜÜÜ ß°Ü Üß ßÜ °ßßßÞ°Ý ßÝ°Ýßßß Þ±Ý ßÝÞÜ Þ²Ý ßÝ ²Ý mistigris ÛÛÝßÝ Þ² august 2018 ²²ÛÝ ÞÛ Þ°ÜÝ °Ý ßß ±Ý ÜÜ²Ý Üß ÛÝß Ü ÞÝ ÞÝ ÞÝ ß ßÜÜß ß The tallying is wrapped, and now I can confidently announce that I have all of the numbers... by which I mean to say that we've just about arrived at the conclusion of our data analysis of nearly 24 years' worth of Mistigris releases, including over 7500 individual artworks (a bit shy of one piece daily over that period, which in reality saw 16 years of what was effectively torpor in the middle.) This is granting us an unprecedented "big picture" view into our activities and wider trends informing them. (Most active Mistigris contributor of all time?  Crowkeeper! And believe it or not, the gap between him and Horsenburger is widening! But to be fair, he did have a 22-year head start... though granted he only contributed 34 items in that period.) The problem with having all of the numbers is that (as you have just seen) I can't yet find a way of making any of it interesting to anyone other than myself... but it has been very effective at using objective, uncaring metrics to rewrite the Mistigris oral history, building up quiet individuals who actually consistently contributed art to artpacks over people who made a big impression on the echomail networks and IRC channels but didn't in fact manifest much in our main activity, the compilation and distribution of artpacks. Big personalities are useful in establishing a community, but there are no artpacks without any art. One of the most heartening trends emerging from the data (and a helpful segue bridging our accidental blind stumbling into actual useful and interesting newsletter content) is the indication that many of our most prolific and consistent contributors of all time are newcomers from our post-revival period, an indication that despite neurotic nostalgia to the contrary, our best days may not necessarily be behind us! And so welcome to our August artpack, four paragraphs in. We've been releasing these monthly for nearly two years now, experimenting with curating themed vs. unthemed collections, which both have their strengths and weaknesses. This month's is another "free play" pack with no overarching theme running through the submissions. There are, however, plenty of sub-themes among individuals' contributions: this time around we are sharing a subset of Alistair Cree's teletext vehicle collection (you should see his teletext garage), the conclusion of Bhaal_Spawn's #Gaminghaikus series (which we started running one year ago; hopefully this doesn't mark the end of Bhaal_Spawn's appearances in our collections, as the poetry was secretly a Trojan horse insinuating us closer to the true treasure of their visual art) (by which I mean to say no, the real treasure wasn't our friendship all along), Horsenburger's teletext portraits of comedians (difficult to place otherwise in our rigorous filing of art into themes such as television, film, video games, fine art, world history, etc.), Jamie Graham's typewritten travelogues (does that make his pieces TTY art? Sadly no, but nice try!), Kalcha's Shift_JIS explorations into the realm of French poetry (oh, that old cliche!), and the Mythical Man's round works. (You know, they're, uh, round. At least, the ones we're including this month are.) But lest I run the risk of giving our regulars all of the acclaim (or worse yet, leaving all the LJN for the greenhorns!), allow me to sprinkle a bit (of acclaim, remember? Perhaps best not to ask just how one sprinkles such a thing, the mental images are a real roller-coaster ride) on the artists making their artpack debuts here this month: let us welcome composer Antriksh Bali, nerd LambdaCalculus (that's not what he's doing for us -- ahem, that position has already been filled -- it just seems a handy way of summing up his projects outside of Mist 8), RexPaint textmode recluse PiquANSI and pixelart storyteller upper.case! And finally, a big thanks to Nail, who despite great disagreements with our curatorial direction nonetheless voluntarily emerged to externally satisfy one of our very few existential artpack requirements -- FILE_ID.DIZ ASCII art labels -- and then sat by, baffled and bewildered, as we stubbornly banked them rather than putting them to use. Not only that, he also graciously coloured this pack's DIZ for the infofiles instead of our previous practice of getting blind monkeys in boxing gloves to spice them up with a little spot colour -- you can really see the difference you get when you use an artist and take the boxing gloves off. (Ironically, ldb gets a big kick out of the pugilist ape colour treatment, as you can see below in a garish desert ASCII art scene in deference to the heat wave kicking our PNW butts at this moment in time.  Different oats for different goats!) In conclusion, thanks for sharing your eyeballs with us on this computer art adventure, and please don't forget that we're always on the prowl for more goodies (not just FILE_ID.DIZ files, but definitely those also) to throw in the next collection and hype up on social media. And locals? Don't miss out on the Square Rave Angura / Vancouver Chipmusic Society coproduction coming up Aug 25th at the Red Gate (at the old Video In site), featuring performances by locals and visiting Japanese chiptune royalty: suesett, Ca5, east breaks in thousand, boaconstructor, Freaky DNA, bryface, Hitori Tori, lootcanal and C130. That's good value for $15, especially when you compare it to the cost of airfare to Japan! Greets to: fuel.wtf, blocktronics.org, impure.nl, amish.0w.nz, galza.org, Fire Dream, Break, pungas.space, paleotronic.com, soundcloud.com/bitcouver, vanchipmusic.ca, and TABNet!  .-.  ) )  '-' ,, || |  Mistigris 2018: || |our best days may not necessarily be behind us!  || | || | , || | | | || '--' |  ,, || .----'  || | || |  | '---'| |  '------.| |_____  ((_)) || |( _/ /|\ \  (o o) || |))("),| | | | | ________\_/___||_|_____((__^_))____________________\_\|/_/__ldb____ SAUCE00MIST0818 infofile nail, cthulu and ldbMistigris 20161104ø!P€IBM VGA