Impure

The Impure crew began in a dark time for the textmode art community, releasing their first artpacks in 1998 as the rest of the scene was crumbling around them. (Their story technically begins a year earlier, with nine releases by the [Gel] crew, who established Impure through a merger with [Woe] (Wasted Obfuscated Evolution, est. 1996) at the end of 1997.) Apparently founded in [area code 905], one of the many crews organized out of the Greater Toronto area (comprising 18% of the Canadian population!), it released regularly past the turn of the century and through to the end of 2004, squeezing out annual artpacks in 2005 and 2006 before going silent for eight years.

One of the last of the '90s groups to form, it was also one of the first to reform, resuming regular releases in 2014 (the same year as our own revival!) and between 2-4 packs every year since then. The revived Impure has taken up 1940 as a number of special internal significance, its focus has almost entirely narrowed to ASCII art, and the organization of modern Impure is conducted in Scandinavia. They have their own corner of the textmode art sphere almost entirely to themselves (since [break!ascii] called it quits).

Some notable artists whose contemporary [text art] is shared more or less exclusively through Impure and represent them at demoparties (see their incredible 2021 production [The Impure Express]!) include hellbeard, anachronist, prismate and [Lord Nikon].

https://impure.nl/