Formation | 1 September 1990 |
---|---|
Purpose | Digital arts: ANSI art/tracking/demo |
Headquarters | United States |
Products | ACiD View ACiDDraw Empathy PabloDraw SAUCE XBin ACiDnews ACiD Radio |
Leader | RaD Man |
Key people | RaD Man Shadow Demon Grimm The Beholder Phantom |
Affiliations | Remorse ASCII pHluid |
Website | acid.org |
ACiD Productions (ACiD) is a digital art group. Founded in 1990, the group originally specialized in ANSI artwork for bulletin board systems (BBS). [1] More recently, they have extended their reach into other graphical media and computer software development. During the BBS-era, their biggest competitor was iCE Advertisements. [2]
ACiD Productions was founded in 1990 as ANSI Creators in Demand [3] by five members: RaD Man, Shadow Demon, Grimm, The Beholder, and Phantom. Their work originally concentrated in ANSI and ASCII art, but the group later branched out into other artistic media such as tracker music, demo coding, and multimedia software development (e.g., image viewers). Membership rose from five members in 1990 to well over seven hundred by 2003. [4]
In the mid-1990s, ACiD created subsidiary groups responsible for these broader areas. For example, Remorse is the official ACiD sub-label responsible for ASCII art and other text-based graphics. Similarly, pHluid is responsible for module tracking and music production, and ACiDic handles bulletin board software modification and enhancement.
Following the post dial-up BBS era, ACiD focused largely on the preservation of digital art history, talk radio news, the sale of their DVD-based artscene archives, [5] [6] and sponsorship of demoparties. [7] [8] [9]
In 2008, the San Francisco gallery 20 goto 10 featured an exhibit of ACiD artists Somms and Lord Jazz. [10] [11] [12] [13]
In 2013, members from ACiD collaborated with 21st century ANSI art collective Blocktronics to produce "Blocktronics ACiD Trip", a scrolling ANSI measuring 3266 lines tall. This ANSI artwork debuted at Demosplash at Carnegie Mellon University where it was awarded first place in the ANSI and ASCII category. [14] [15] [16] [17]
ACiD has produced a variety of well-received works and services. A select list follows:
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user performs functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting. In the early 1980s, message networks such as FidoNet were developed to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to internet-based email.
The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.
.nfo is a filename extension for text files that accompany warez scene releases of pirated software or media.
An acid is any chemical compound that, when dissolved in water, gives a solution with a pH of less than 7.0.
Christian Wirth, better known by the pseudonym RaD Man, is an American computer artist and historian. He works in the field of ANSI art, a method of creating art using a limited set of text characters and color escape codes based loosely on the relevant ANSI standard.
FILE_ID.DIZ is a plain-text file containing a brief description of the content of the archive to which it belongs. Such files were originally used in archives distributed through bulletin board systems (BBSes) and is still used in the warez scene. FILE_ID stands for "file identification". DIZ stands for "description in zipfile".
ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on bulletin board systems. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments. ANSI art also contains special ANSI escape sequences that color text with the 16 foreground and 8 background colours offered by ANSI.SYS, an MS-DOS device driver loosely based upon the ANSI X3.64 standard for text terminals. Some ANSI artists take advantage of the cursor control sequences within ANSI X3.64 in order to create animations, commonly referred to as ANSImations. ANSI art and text files which incorporate ANSI codes carry the de facto.ANS
file extension.
An artpack is an archive of computer artwork which is distributed in a compressed format such as ZIP or RAR.
iCE Advertisements is a digital art group founded in Canada by Many Axe in 1991. Although the expanded title is rarely ever used, iCE is an acronym for Insane Creators Enterprise. iCE, along with ACiD Productions, was one of the most prominent and critically successful groups on the underground computer artscene.
TheDraw is a text editor for MS-DOS to create ANSI and animations as well as ASCII art. The editor is especially useful to create or modify files in ANSI format and text documents, which use the graphical characters of the IBM ASCII code pages, because they are not supported by Microsoft Windows anymore. The first version of the editor was developed in 1986 by Ian E. Davis of TheSoft Programming Services. The last public version of the editor was version 4.63, which was released in October 1993.
Superior Art Creations (SAC) is an underground artscene group which caters primarily to and is well known within the warez scene. SAC members have made, besides ANSI and ASCII art, VGA bitmap graphics, tracker music, and a variety of other works. SAC's character graphics have also been used in bottles and FTP servers.
Mystic BBS is a bulletin board system software program that began in 1995 and was first released to the public in December 1997 for MS-DOS. It has been ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, OS X, and Linux. Mystic was designed to be a spiritual successor to the Renegade (BBS) and Telegard bulletin board systems.
BBS: The Documentary is a 3-disc, 8-episode documentary about the subculture born from the creation of the bulletin board system (BBS) filmed by computer historian Jason Scott of textfiles.com.
Creators of Intense Art, or Cia was an underground computer artscene group that primarily released ANSI, ASCII, and high resolution artwork from 1993 to 2001. Along with iCE and ACiD, Cia was one of the most active, and longest lasting groups on the artscene.
Blade, also referred to as The Blade Nation, was an underground computer artscene group that primarily released ANSI, ASCII, and high resolution artwork from 1994 to 1997, and during a brief time in 1998.
Fire, later known as Fire Graphics, is an underground computer artscene group that released ANSI, ASCII, and high resolution artwork from 1994 to 1998, and from 2021 onwards.
This is a list of the minor computer underground artscene groups spanning from roughly 1992 to the present day.
textfiles.com is a website dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the bulletin board system (BBS) world and various subcultures, and thus providing "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them". The site categorizes and stores thousands of text files, primarily from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and some that were created well into the 1990s. A broad range of topics is presented, including anarchy, art, carding, computers, drugs, ezines, freemasonry, computer games, hacking, phreaking, politics, computer piracy, sex, and UFOs. The site was created and is run by Jason Scott.
Aces of ANSI Art was the first group of artists specifically organized for the purposes of creating and distributing ANSI art. The group was founded and operated by two BBS enthusiasts from California, "Zyphril" and "Chips Ahoy", from 1989 through 1991.
ACID (ANSI Creators In Demand) where the first of these international groups, trend setters who originally specialised in ANSI art and ANSIMation ads. They earned their reputation at being one of the best groups by creating art for the best pirate boards of the time.