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The
impact of hirez
by The Knave of iCE
I suppose the final surreal days
of the deep underground were seen in a period from 1995-1996.
During that time there was a change in the world we knew so well
up to that point. Not only were many of us forced to grow from
MSDOS editor to MS Notepad, the artists of the scene migrated
from TheDraw to higher platform art programs. These 32 bit monsters
would become our medium of advertisement. But would it actually
be advertisement? What was there to advertise now, but the smoldering
remnants of underground renegade sprawls coughing on their last
500mb drive, or the new but unpopular telnet boards trying so
desperately to keep the scene alive below the surface of internet?
The simple ANSI-based boards of yester-year
were unique in that they called for a single streamlined genre
of art that was accessible to most, and was fairly simple to learn.
With ANSI, you mainly had to worry about shading and color coordination.
It was an art form in itself. But ANSI was a canvas with limitations.
When you move to the realm of 32bit
software, high-speed cable connections, and high-resolution software,
the canvas becomes much more wide open. Suddenly the character-set
of ANSI begins to look like the dress of the 70's era. Its simply
outdated. Now comes the opportunity to make real, dynamic art.
Think of it as ANSI with a pulse. Shading, lighting, painting,
line tools. Hirez is wide open. With it, you can virtually do
anything you want to do, express yourself in any manner.
Now, I do not condemn ANSI as "unartistic".
Its simply that now we coexist in a different environment. Its
no longer a DOS world. Its no longer a BBS world. Its now a web-world.
Some of us may not like to accept the fact that the Internet has
crunched our playground of simple interfaces,custom macros,and
login schemes. But we have to live with the fact that boards are
for the most part gone. There are new players, internationally.
Gone are the long distance restrictions of the old days. We are
global now. This is an world-wide scene we are dealing with. Competition
is on the rise to create the best damn graphics out there, and
if I can dazzle the world with a JPG, then let it be so, because
i can never capture the imagination of this new world with an
image drawn using a character-set.
Those of us who have been around,
seen the sights, walked the walk of the underground; we know what
the bbs art scene was all about. We lived it, and breathed it.
It was simple and complex at the same time. I know there are some
things that may not get close to the gleam of a well-done font
in a login scheme of the bbs, but we need to take that knowledge
to the next level. We've experienced the old school art forms.
And though we'll always appreciate the old school, there always
need to be a new school. Hirez is our new school.
High resolution graphics are going
to be the realization of the blade-runner phenomenon. They're
going to make the Internet sharp, precise grids of data folding
back like neon across fields of lens flares and cubes of 3D data.
Its going to project us into a high speed world of efficient communication
and interactivity that will allow mankind to progress technologically
farther than we have ever come before.
In essence, I've seen a lot of changes
in the scene, but none more impacting than hirez art. Its brought
new groups out of the web- work. Its allowed sites to grow because
of the abilities of these artists. On a personal level, it has
allowed me to import my real art and digitize it, so Im giving
personal touch to something digital that someone can actually
feel when they view it. Its more alive, and has more of a soul
to it. Hirez has opened a new door to the scene and I think we
all need to take note of it, while still remembering the doors
of the past that got us here in the first place. -The Knave -iCE
VGA Artist
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