    ---Above all else...

    This is an honest-to-goodness floppy diskette of computer artwork distributed
    at the Living Closet event at the Church of Pointless Hysteria on Friday, July
    23rd, 1999.  Only 10 of these disks existed, though most of their contents
    have also been distributed electronically through various forums.  (2001 note:
    Only two of the ten disks were picked up, making this collection even rarer
    than the constraints of its limited-edition run would suggest!  Cthulu applied
    himself and somehow found a way to get Mistigris ignored by two entirely
    different scenes!)

    (2014 note: It was admittedly a long shot, but I was moved to believe that the
    LC clique of young dancers, painters and poets might be interested in what
    we'd previously been up to based on a VRML database demonstration LC guru Dan
    Lindenberger had presented at an earlier LC house party on 41st Ave, June
    12th, 1998.  I attempted to build bridges between these two disparate creative
    worlds twice more: with transportation help from Wild Thang and Puddle, I set
    up my computer at the big Malkin Bowl Living Closet extravaganza Aug 22, 1998,
    as a public art-making station -- to distinctly limited use as demonstrated in
    CLOSET1.LIT in the pending M-9808.ZIP -- and brought a cassette tape of
    freshly-minted Tracker Fix tunes derived from the Malkin Bowl LC event, to be
    aired as intermission music at an LC event at the late Press Club Mar 28, 1999
    -- only to be stymied by the venue's lack of cassette deck.  Shortly
    thereafter, the only copies of the songs were lost in The Great Botched Linux
    Installation Attempt of 2000, and the well of computer art ran dry, seemingly
    for the last time.  I continued on as senior "staff" (a volunteer with
    influence) at the Living Closet until its final principals all moved on to
    greener pastures -- many today running the annual ArtsWells Festival in
    northern BC -- in 2002.  But enough interruption, we need at least three more
    lines of period infofile before I butt in again!)

    It contains both high- (.JPG, .GIF, .RIP) and low-resolution (.ANS, .ASC)
    graphical artwork, scans of photographs, writing (.LIT, .TXT), music (.S3M)
    and MS-DOS executables (.EXE, .COM) as well as other archives (.ZIP)
    containing more of the above.

    (2014 note: the disk was intended as a low-footprint "best-of" survey of
    Mistigris' previously-released artistic achievements across its whole spread
    of genres, styles and formats -- so works present were curated to represent
    our versatility and breadth over the 4-year period of our active years rather
    than marking typical or outstanding works.  Otherwise put: there are lots of
    other songs that might have gone in and taken up the whole disk, so instead we
    have one very nice chiptune... or Where's All The Diamond Traveller?  (And of
    course MIST1014.ZIP wasn't yet a glimmer in anyone's eye back in 1999.)  Rest
    assured that if I'd had better compression algorithms at my disposal, or some
    imaginary 3-megabyte floppy disk to work with, things would have looked very
    different.  Also of note: this little retrospective marked the first and only
    release of several pieces here whose distinguished merit motivated me to set
    them aside as flagship works to organize other projects around such as a music
    CD, a poetry chapbook, etc.  By 1999 it was becoming clear that these
    extracurricular side-projects wouldn't be happening in any kind of hurry, so I
    satisfied myself by technically releasing these otherwise-unseen files to the
    audience of two intrepid disk-takers, and a presumably comparable audience
    enjoyed a handmade HTML gallery of the disk's contents thrown together in
    2001.

    And now, as part of Cthulu's General Computer Art Amnesty of late 2014 in
    commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Mistigris
    artpack, he is, in a very roundabout way, feeding these works back into the
    artscene at long last.  It's been long enough that even their creators have
    since forgotten all the pieces in the first place, so dip your brain once more
    into the pool and enjoy the art as if for the first time all over again!)

    This infofile is mirrorred on this floppy in two alternate formats: as
    README.ANS in ANSI colours and as README.TXT in raw text.

    ---First off: technical requirements:

    This is a diskette formatted and intended for use on MS-DOS and compatible
    (Windows 3.x, '9x) systems, though much of the data can be cracked open and
    used on other platforms. (or in 2014, using DOSBox.)

    ---Use and access:

    The contents of the archive ARTDISK-.ZIP can be extracted using your favorite
    uncompression software: PKUnzip and WinZip are two likely candidates.  (2014:
    your OS will take care of it.)

    The graphic files with .JPG and .GIF extensions can be viewed in most web
    browsers as well as in a whole array of graphics display programs. (2014: your
    OS has you covered.)

    The files with .ANS, .ASC and .RIP extensions can be viewed with the use of
    Goldview, which is included with this archive as GOLDVIEW.ZIP

    OMLET003.ZIP and KITHE-14.ZIP are e-mags (electronic magazines) which contain
    MS-DOS executables within their respective archives.

    The music file with the .S3M extension can be played in all forms of tracking
    software (2014 eg. Schism Tracker) and also within WinAmp (or, 2014, VLC.)

    2001 Update: click here for an web browser gallery of the disk's contents.---Credits:

    The art contained in this archive is a middling sampling of art produced over
    a five year period (1994-99) by the following computer-based artists, all
    members or guests of the locally-based (area code 604) computer art group
    Mistigris:

    Basic, Candide, Corinthian, Coyote, Crystal Meth, Dead Soul, Dr. CPU,
    Eerie, Etana, Eto, The Extremist, Feral, Fire from Heaven, Happyfish,
    Haquisaq, The Iconoclast, Inquisitor, Jive, Kyo, Lady Blue, The Lite, Mage,
    Mordecai, Mr. Flibbles, Muton, Plastic, Prisonernumberone, The Pope, Pure
    Voltage, Quip, Rash, Sarcasm, Sentience, Shaolin, Silent Knight, Tincat,
    Totoman, Tricolore, ts, Tzeentch, Weird, Zinnia Rock and Cthulu.

    ---Disclaimer:

    None of the BBS phone number information contained within any of the artworks
    in this archive is likely to be valid anymore (2014: we can assert with
    greater confidence) and we do not endorse calling them up to find out.  In
    addition, all files on this disk have been virus-scanned and are to the best
    of our knowledge clean.

    Neither Mistigris nor The Living Closet take any responsibility for
    ramifications in the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or electronic
    realms resulting from use or viewing of the contents of this disk.

    ---Contact:

    The distributor and archivist responsible for the dissemination of
    this disk can be reached at cthulu@tabnet.ca

    Online forums for local-area computer artists also exist(ed) at the (then-)new
    TabNet WWWThreads BBS (once at http://bonk.dynip.com, The British Columbia
    Community System Citadel BBS (formerly) at http://www.bccs.net and on the
    EFNet IRC in #mist.  (That one has actually been inhabited at least twice over
    the past 15 years.  For further information on the past, present and future
    creative activities of the extended Mistigris community, please visit
    mistfunk.tumblr.com or @mistfunk on Twitter.)

    For people missing the old BBS experience, Milky Way BBS is still up and
    operational (well, it was back in '99), though its primary clientele consists
    of 14-year-old wrestling fans disallowed access to the wider Internet (who in
    2014 are, oh my god, 29 year old adults with marriages and mortgages.) It had
    four dialup lines: (but can no longer be reached through any of them, so
    listing the numbers would serve no real purpose.)

    The Living Closet maintain[ed] webspace at
    http://www.minotaurmedia.com/livingcloset

    If further steps are made to bind the performing community with the online
    one, (done: thank MySpace) it may see some use and/or updates.  (It hosted a
    tremendous gallery of big local talents we presented before they got famous,
    eg. Shane Koyczan, the Be Good Tanyas, etc... all empty frames in the Phantom
    Zone of the Way Back Machine now.)

    All contents of this disk and sundry archives are © copywrong 1999, 2001.

                                                   Information wants to be free.