Greetings to the creative community of the VHS, simultaneously looking forward and backward in efforts to teach old gear new tricks. I’m here representing Mistigris, the pre-eminent underground computer art group of area code 604 and its BBS community, circa 1994-1998, historically pumping out enormous quantities of textmode and high resolution artwork, tracker music, loaders and literature into the artscene FTP sites.
The technology changed and this all went away, but we never forgot – and now, as evidenced by the achievements of Sixteen Colors and Blocktronics, it is roaring back. Building a bridge of our own between the past and the future, we have resumed releasing annual “artpacks”, collecting interesting work being done with the alleged “new media” of yesteryear, and we have just issued a call for submissions to a collection scheduled to be released this October.
I’m confident we may be on the same wavelength as some of you, as I have a hazy memory of being shown giant boxes full of Amigas, Apple IIs and Commodore 64s in various states of disrepair in your back stacks… and I know for a fact that my friend Alex showed me a video of a teletype printer at your facility chugging out ASCII art on a spool of tractor-feed paper.
Anyhow, we’d like to get an eyefull of your technological art projects and, if we’re lucky, have a chance to share them in some way with the wider international computer art community.
Nominal details and some useful links (the 2014 call for submissions is quite a piece of work) can be found at http://mistfunk.tumblr.com/post/143587392412/mistigris-call-for-submissions-hey-you-yes
Thanks for your time!