Dipswitch: How did you get in touch with computers the first time?

Avenger: My father was and still is interested into computers and electronics in general. He owned a c64 and i enjoyed playing all those cool games like jumpman, turrican, pirates and maniac mansion. that was my first contact with computers, back then i was about 7 or 8. the first signs of the scene were all those cracktro's. i fucking loved the ocean loader tune of pirates i fooled around with basic but at that age my programs were of course not too impressive. around 1992 or so my father bought a 286 pc and on my 11th birthday i was introduced to play commander keen. some time later my father bought a modem and started to read and write in the fidonet.

Dipswitch: How did you get in touch with the scene?

Avenger: To be honest, the initial motivation about getting into the scene was "pc underground" - the infamous book by one of those coexistence guys a cd-rom was attached to it and in one of the demo-zips was a mailswap-addy by the avatar/snet, who's still on #coders.ger quite regurlar. that must have been around 1994. i wanted to get in contact with him and since i read somewhere that he ran a board, i searched in the fido nodelist for his board "britannia". i started to call it and was really impressed by the great ansigraphics (well, back then i thought they'd be great and all the scene flavour. i downloaded every shitty file and after a while of reading the fido scene-echos szene.ger and demo.ger i asked avatar if i could become "point". i already tried to code in turbo pascal and did a few thedraw font-ansis after a while of ripping sources and so on, i dropped coding again and sticked to ansi. in the ansi.ger (fido-echo) i first met the black maiden guys voice and tex. i joined a bunch of local lamers called utshg, released two artpacks with them and a couple of lame other stuff until i decided to apply to black maiden. my ansis were quite unbearable, but kyp (who joined bm after the insommnia-pack) and voice decided to let me in i was fucking happy and i loved ansi. i drew the whole day and released dozens of logos in every pack. i don't know why but i always focused on logos. after a while i was recognized by other german artists. i was invited to the anarchy-net (a fido-based scene-message-net) and got to know alot of other scene people - all the (pc-)scenes were linked to the same nets in the past (fido-ansi.ger, fido-scene.ger, fido-demo.ger, anarchynet, ebolanet, pyxnet ..). so i met musicians, coders, graphicians as well as warez guys. i got better and better and until now i've been in a couple of quite known ansi groups like mean scheme, fire, awe letterings and so on..

Dipswitch: You were active in the PC demo/artscene and are still active. What do you do there?

Avenger: my connection to the demoscene is based on those old relationships i made via the message nets and besides that i am helping out poti of black maiden, who organizes a small german demoparty called evoke. today i loose the connection to the demo-scene more and more, since many people moved to the internet and i sticked with boards. i still draw ansi and ascii, but not that much anymore, since our beloved real life has caught me, too another reason is that the ansi-scene got a lot smaller and there are few releases nowadays, it's not that motivating anymore

Dipswitch: Why did you start to draw Amiga Ascii, after doing PC Ansi and PC ($-Style) Ascii?

Avenger: i started to draw ascii very early, but neglected it a long time when i was focusing on ansi only. why did i start to draw amiga ascii? hm, actually just to try if i can master it, too. i wanted to try all kinds of textmode art and i always liked ascii (not as much as ansi but still . another motivation was lord chaos of ex-whale (nowadays of kolor), who i got to know via the previous described message-nets. i wanted to be as good as him and he was a very friendly and funny guy, who helped me out from time to time (explain the amiga-scene and such) ansi bores me from time to time and then i draw ascii. i was bored of the pc scene in general, it had nothing new for me and so i started to call a few amiga boards. that's it. i am still a pc scener, but i like amiga ascii and dedicate my ascii-collies to the amiga scene.

Dipswitch: What is Black Maiden?

Avenger: black maiden is mainly a group of ansi/ascii/vga artists. we have different projects like evoke (the demoparty) and such, but we grew up in the ansi scene. the original black maiden founded by voice and tex was founded about 10-12 years ago (i do not really know the exact date) as a cracking and coding group on the CPC. 1994 they entered the pc scene and started to do graphics, i joined in the end of 1995 and after voice and tex retired, i was chosen to take over the role of the main organizer in 1997 and slowly black maiden got more and more recognition from the international
scene. but we were always the underdogs, because we released only very 3-4 months and somehow our distribution was not too great. but we were always the stylekings due to lack of time and motivation our ansi releases got fewer in the time. but that does not prevent us being good friends, we are partly quite local to each other and so it's quite usual that we meet from time to time.

Dipswitch: Please explain our (mostly-Amiga) readers the structure of a PC Ansi/Ascii group in comparison to Amiga Asciigroups!

Avenger: the main difference is that you release together with other artists and not single. it creates much more a group atmosphere, and every release is a nice feeling. some ansi groups have a leader who decides everything, but we are more or less democratic and vote for every major decision and only some organizers take care of distribution and all those stuff. at the moment i am still main organizer, because i am the one with the most free time (highschool the disadvantage of group releases, that there have to be deadlines or you always have to wait for others, even if you are done with your work.

Dipswitch: In Black Maiden pack #20 you announced the stop of releasing artpacks. Will single collies still be released?

Avenger: yes. all our other work will be published via a webgallery and probably a little mag which will contain our bi-monthly produced art.

Dipswitch: You draw on PC. How do you manage to let your asciis look nice on an Amiga, too? Do you use a kind of emulator or something?

Avenger: yes, i use afs.com.

Dipswitch: What do you think about so-called 'oldschool ascii' PC groups like Remorse, Mimic etc.?

Avenger: well, i respect them and they release very nice newskool ascii, but when it comes to oldskool-ascii i prefer most amiga-groups.

Dipswitch: Did you notice that many PC artists stopped to believe into the board scene? Someone of Remorse even stated in a colly that there are no more boards left as noone needs them. Isn't that a vicious circle since Ansi/Ascii has in first line the aim to do art for the board scene?

Avenger: this is an often discussed question in the pc ansi scene. i prefer boards because they have a special atmosphere (not that sterile like internet and more individual) and you don't have to wait for years to get to the next page. it is a vicious circle and for ansi i think the only way to survive is the "artform" way. ansi can only survive, if it gets recognized as an artform by a broader public. releases from dieznyik, 4o, crayon and so on are the right way i think. for ascii it's a bit different. telnet boards are usually too slow for ansi and so ascii has still some chances to survive.

Dipswitch: What do you think about Amiga scene in general? It's a quite new terrain for you, isn't it?

Avenger: i don't know much about the amiga scene, to be honest. i always got the impression that there are less lamers and especially the amiga-graphicians and demos are lovely my first impression from ascii collies was that the ascii-scene is a tad unfriendlier, but after getting into it i just recognized that the opposite is the truth

Dipswitch: What's about readable versus unreadable style?

Avenger: i am definately pro readable style, where readable means for me that the is a system behind the letters and not just a pile of slashes. you should be able to recognize a development in the style and not just "one logo that way, one logo completely different"

Dipswitch: Now you are allowed to brag about your board!

Avenger: there is not much to say, i have very few callers and i just keep it online to support the bbs-scene in general and share artpacks, ascii collies, zines, graffiti and some other stuff with the last few german bbs callers. alot of great ansi artists have drawn something for it, so it's still worth a call it runs pcboard and its number is +49-2406-929269 (v34+x75).

Dipswitch: Wanna greet someone?

Avenger: um, i take my first interview ever as a opportunity to greet a lot of guys: dv8, poti, junk, the avatar, assign, buster, bisonours, black weasel, dwarf, dizman, you dipswitch , dieznyik, fastjack, salice, 4o, faxe, jerusalem, jey, konami, kyp, lemon, leo, lord chaos, milkmang, mother, nail, nemo, scheibe, disco1974, bizzarro, tarjan, noize, osel, outraider, positive pain, pandur, samurai, scope, seltorn, shaitan, shine, speed freak, storm&c-storm, dalezy, tleilax, tna, toot, tex, voice, zaner, zippy, bk, trc, nstalkie, mortimer twang .. all black maiden members and ex-members.. all (ex-)members of the now dead groups utshg, ega, fire, mean scheme, zenith design, seraphic, everglo, awe, fuel, blood, blend, phat .. all members of the still alive groups poffelipoff, glue, fokus, kolor, hieroglyphics ..

Dipswitch: Thanks for the interview !