ÚÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³  ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´  ³ ³ ³ ³ ³±±±Ý³±±± ܱ±±±±±Ü ±±±±±±±± ±±±   ³ ³  ³ ³ ³  ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄŲ²²²Å²²²Ä²²²ÄIJ²²Ä²²²ÄÄÄßßIJ²²ÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´  ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ÛÛÛÛÝÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛ³ ÛÛÛ ³  ³  ³ ³ ³  ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÛÛÛÞÛÛÛÛÄÛÛÛÄÄÛÛÛÄÛÛÛÄÄÄÅÄÄÛÛÛÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ ³  ³ ³ ³ ³²²² ²²²² ²²² ²²² ²²² ÜÜÜ ²²² ²²²  ³  ³ ³ ³ bÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄű±±ÄÞ±±±Äß±±±±±±ßı±±±±±±±Ä±±±±±±±±ÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ y³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³  ³  ³ ³ ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅܱ±±±±±Üı±±±±±±±Ä±±±ÝÄÄÞ±±±Ä±±±±±±ÜÄܱ±±±±±Üı±±±±±±±ÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ N³  ³ ³²²² ³²²² ²²² ²²² ²²²² ²²²² ²²² ²² ²²² ²²² ²²²³ ²²²³ ³ ³ oÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÛÛÛÄÅÄÄÄÄÛÛÛÄÄÛÛÛÄÛÛÛÛÝÞÛÛÛÛÄÛÛÛÛÛÛßÄÛÛÛÄÄÛÛÛÄÛÛÛÅÄÛÛÛÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ e³ ³ ³ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÞÛÛÝÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ³ ³ ³ lÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄŲ²²ÄŲ²²Ä²²²ÄIJ²²Ä²²²Ä²²Å²²² ²²²ÄIJ²Ä²²²ÄIJ²²Ä²²²ÅIJ²²ÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ ³  ³ ³ß±±±±±±ß ±±± ±±± ±±± Þݳ±±± ±±±±±±ß ß±±±±±±ß ±±±³ ±±±³ ³ ³ GÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄ´ ³  ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³  ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÙ Greetings and salutations, textmode art fans! My subject today is Noel Gamboa, a name that, prior to my digging it up from textfiles.com [in August of 2016], hadn't been heard in an ANSI art context since ... basically, 1990, twenty-six years prior, and well before anything we've traditionally recognized as the ANSI art scene was even crawling out of the primordial soup. And yet his early Public Domain ANSI art work was sufficiently meritorious (and, it turns out, influential) that I had to dig up its bones and parade them around as some species of missing link. But like the coelacanth, sometimes you're surprised by living history jumping out of the fossil record and giving you a thumbs-up on Google+. (Really, anything taking place on Google+ is an improbable surprise, but this one doubly so.) (Ha ha, that's what you get partially writing infofiles about online matters and then setting them aside for a year, RIP Google+!) So we were able to make contact and I was able to ask him a few questions -- hoping to shed some light on the ANSI scene before the ANSI scene, like a more powerful telescope looking farther away and hence further back toward the beginning of the universe. [I, uh, asked him way too many questions, which actually paralysed him into not answering any of them, but fortunately some of them ended up being addressed in our subsequent correspondence, so I'll see if I can't edit that into some kind of coherence.] It seems like ANSI art has been with us always -- the textmod.es timeline [went] back to 1991, but textfiles.com tracks pieces all the way back to 1982! The further back one reaches into its early days the harder it is to keep a straight face describing the ANSI compositions as art. Despite their small scale (the only scale available at the time -- TheDraw, first launched in 1986, limited works by default to screens of 25 lines, 50 if you pushed it... Wikipedia is claiming 100 lines, but citation needed, mofos), Noel's pieces stand out as effectively rendering detailed subjects recognizably at such a low resolution, no small feat. He managed to somehow hit on a basic precept adopted by the later underground ANSI art scene via comic books, that of rendering fundamental details through strong black outlines. There were evolutionary leaps forward after his time, of two-tone colouring of highlights and using the shading characters to achieve all of the hues possible by combining all foreground and background colours... (leaps he tentatively employed, but not as a matter of course) but those just put muscles and skin on ANSI art as we know it, though -- black outlines provided the bones on which it all hung. But he also drew schematic diagrams of starships in a completely different oldschool ASCII art style. (And then to my delight he combined the traditions, taking the ASCII schematics and tinting and animating them with ANSI control codes! Straddling both worlds, belonging to neither. Was that something that people did back in 1990? I haven't seen much overlap in my archaeological digs.) His context is far enough back that it challenges what we think of as the most fundamental basics of the context of historical ANSI art production: that ANSI art was drawn to beautify and promote specific BBSes, and successful ANSI artists were compensated with increased traffic to their boards, status among local SysOps, and in some cases (while the statute of limitations may be up, it's not my intention here to trick anyone into incriminating themselves) access to forbidden file bases on other BBSes where warez and XXX materials were illegally traded. Intriguingly, many of his specimens don't appear to have been associated with any particular BBSes, existing independently -- to satisfy a personal curiosity or challenge... basically these were pictures he was going to draw whether there was any application for them or not. Much like his ANSI art successors, back in his era he also drew some (pre- Image) comic book superheroes, and also dabbled with subjects from pop music ranging from the globally successful -- IRS Records and Billy Idol -- to the acutely SoCal-local with Dread Zeppelin, just emerging at that time. But for the most part his ANSI art themes gravitate to two distinct realms of youthful enthusiasm: anime and Star Trek. (Indeed, we here incorporate in its entirety v2.2 of his AnsiTrek collection from 1990 -- the first artpack? -- which first drew our attention to his oeuvre while doing a Pixel Pompeii profile on Trek ANSI art through the ages.) But as a lone wolf with no group affiliation, without any "scene" or crew of competitive, trash-talking peers spurring him on (only his colleagues Michael "MCL" Ling, Michael Arnett and Ebony Eyes on the RelayNET RIME ANSI conference -- basically an earlier incarnation of the FidoNet-style echomail message bases that the underground artscene harnessed with eg. TwingleNet, AgoraNet, CyberCrimeNet and KiTSCHNet), in a story any BBS-based artscene veteran will woefully recall, he was part of an earlier wave of cyberspace pioneers drifting from BBSes to university Internet access circa 1990: "By the early '90s my time was consumed by some other hobby/obsession. That's why I dropped out of ANSI art. I was playing MUD games, writing MUDs, and neck deep into anime fandom. And also this whole college thing: college helped with internet access, internet access helped to wean from woefully local BBS affairs." There are a couple of dominant California narratives for career trajectories, and his went more in the Silicon Valley than the Hollywood direction -- after college he wound up paying the bills at Microsoft and Amazon. But back in cyberspace, like a tub of leftovers overlooked in the back of the fridge while you're away on vacation, strange new life took up from where he left off. Though Noel lived in San Diego, there were eyes on him peeping from San Jose -- radical ones. By which I mean that Noel Gamboa's early works proved highly inspirational to RaDMaN, whose impact on the PC underground artscene in his years steering ACiD Productions cannot be overstated. How do we know that RaDMaN liked Noel's stuff? Easy: because he ripped it on at least two occasions. Settle down there -- attribution was free and loose in the freewheeling Wild West atmosphere of 1990 online, and it was not uncommon to find the same Public Domain ANSIs (a label that Noel, incidentally, finds troubling and confusing: "It's weird to read it referred to as 'PD' as there's nothing public domain about what we did... every readme file you'll see in the archives, the artists claim ownership of their art. I think we can make an argument for a better name: 'pre-scene ANSI and BBS art.' ... or something." Sorry Noel, I fear that ship has sailed!) circulating in various altered forms promoting different BBSes and credited to different artists. I don't want to make excuses for anyone here, but early ACiD packs broke rules that didn't even exist yet, unwittingly perpetrating violations such as releasing GIF2ANS conversions and even worse, ANSI art drawn in the 80x50 screen mode! To his credit, RaDMaN didn't just scrawl his tag over Gamboa's, but he made changes and enhancements for the original works before taking full credit for them. But you can't blame him, they're great! The ACiD infringements are included in this collection, as is one other rip from a Liquid artpack. Indeed, Noel Gamboa has earned a strange distinction among the ANSI-drawing PD contingent of most likely having had their creations inadvertently exposed to the widest audiences -- not just in ACiD acquisitions but unwittingly served up to every unfortunate whose desktop PC was infected with the MadMan.1663 MS-DOS virus, which displayed a vicious ANSI glare cropped out of a Noel Gamboa portrait of X-Man Wolverine. This specific infection was sufficiently pervasive that I was able to round up two creative reinterpretations of the Wolvie glare from the outside world (folded in to this collection), including one coincidentally by Illarterate, the man who inadvertently sparked off a mass teletext revival and who we already work with in Mistigris on a monthly basis. Noel is well impressed by the ANSI art feats of today, though you can tell that his a e s t h e t i c has clearly been informed by bygone ages when he asks how today's ANSI artists go about embedding ANSI music into their screens. But despite reminding him of this fondly-remembered portion of his life, I do not think we are going to be getting any more ANSI art out of him. His old stuff, however, stands the test of time more than most of his PD peers, and presented as new to most of you in the audience, it's fresh enough.  (Fresh, you know, like 1990, phunky phresh? Is that a weird note to wrap on? I can't help it, all of my notes are weird.) Anyhow, I hope that you enjoy this curious little time capsule! SAUCE00The Noel Gamboa story Cthulu 20190423'3P• IBM VGA