:''This article details the

artscene The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork. Early computer art The history of computer art predates the computer art scene for several decades, with the first expe ...

group, Cia. For information regarding the

warez Warez is a common computing and broader cultural term referring to pirated software (i.e. illegally copied, often after deactivation of anti-piracy measures) that is distributed via the Internet. Warez is used most commonly as a noun, a plural ...

group CiA see List of warez groups'' Creators of Intense Art, or Cia was an underground computer artscene group that primarily released ANSI,

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...

, and

high resolution Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. "Higher resolution" means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how cl ...

artwork from 1993 to 2001. Along with

iCE Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

and

ACiD In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...

, Cia was one of the most active, and longest lasting groups on the

History

left, 200px, Cia " Hirez" Artwork. Creators of Intense Art was founded during the summer of 1993 by a collective of ANSI artists and demo coders. Like other

groups at the time, members communicated primarily through the use of

dial up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

bulletin board systems. The senior staff positions constantly changed hands during Cia's eight-year run, and it was ANSI artistbr>Andrew Bell
under the pseudonym of Napalm, that kept the group on track . Though Napalm drifted in and out of the "

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

" position, he was always recognized as the head of Cia. Not unlike the rivalry between

and

, there was highly visible competition between Cia and the members of

group Blade. The 21st century was met with declining interest among Cia members, and the underground computer artscene in general. In early 2001, Napalm quietly disbanded Cia and its members pursued other artistic projects.

Releases

Cia members were responsible for works of literature, artwork, music, and software. Content was released monthly in the form of an

artpack An artpack is an archive of computer artwork which is distributed in a compressed format such as ZIP or RAR. While most artpacks today contain either ANSI and ASCII art or ''hirez'' VGA, they may also include a combination of RIPscrip art, tr ...

, referred to as a "conspiracy". 77

conspiracies A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...

were released by Cia, with 72 currently available for download on the internet. Conspiracies were packaged with

zip Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

compression and included a monthly memberlist and newsletter. Beginning with the 73rd release, conspiracies consisted strictly of high resolution artwork, and included

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

files with the artwork embedded.

Conspiracies A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...

Image viewer An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical images; it can often handle various graphics file formats. Such software usually renders the image according to properties of the display such as color depth, ...

Wiretap
a DOS mode multi format viewer.

Image editor

Ciadraw
a DOS mode ANSI,

and ADF editor.

External links

Dark Domain
The ACiD Artpacks Archive on DVD ({{ISBN, 0-9746537-0-5), contains all available Cia Conspiracies.
The unofficial Creators of Intense Art beanie
Artscene groups