The Art Of Warez Documentary

The ANSI scene is a lesser known underground world of art born out of early computers in the 90’s. BBS’s were Bulletin Board Systems where people communicated and traded illegal cracks of video games and software at the very beginning of the internet. These bulletin boards were private and had to be accessed through passwords creating underground communities. Hundreds of thousands of original pieces of art were made for these BBS’s, most of which are now gone.

The Art Of Warez is a thorough and beautiful documentary, created by Safecrackers, covering the art from this time as well as the rise and fall of different groups of artists like ACID and ICE that were dedicated to this medium. 

It’s rare to have an art form explode and then die in such a short amount of time, something that can really only occur based on the tool becoming obsolete or being replaced with a “better” tool.

Often times art seems to flourish when heavy constraints are put on it mixed with a will to create. ANSI was a text based form inside MSDOS created block by block similar to pixel art. 

It’s amazing to see how far these teenagers took the art in such a limited space. Some seem to be ahead of where graffiti stands today. It’s sad that things like this have to come to an end but maybe that also makes them more special?

Watch the documentary here: