Christian Wirth

Christian Wirth, more often known as "RaD Man", has been a leader of the computer art group ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand) for over 15 years. In the late 1980s during the heyday of dial-up Bulletin Board Systems, Wirth joined a group of computer artists called Aces of ANSI Art (AAA), which created computer artwork for bulletin board systems and signed their works with both the name of the artist and the organization. This group eventually disbanded and Wirth co-founded ACiD, a group which helped inspire what became known as the "ANSI Art Scene", a subculture of hundreds of groups of artists creating computer-based artwork and music. ACiD's main product was the release of a monthly "Art Pack", which would collect dozens or hundreds of artworks created in the previous 30 days. At one point, according to Wirth, he was skipping family vacations, school, and workdays to ensure the packs would come out as scheduled. Out of one hundred monthly artpacks, only a small number were late - one due to the birth of his son. In 1996, RaD Man founded the ACiD Artpacks Archive to collect the artpacks created by the hundreds of groups that followed in ACiD's footsteps. This collection eventually was transferred to a DVD-ROM, "Dark Domain", in 2004. Since 2002, following his interview in the documentary "BBS", Wirth has focused entirely on the history aspects of both computer and text-based artwork, holding seminars and presentations are various conferences worldwide, and continually collecting and archiving aspects of the roots of his group's art. For a short time, Wirth ran a downloadable radio show called ARTS (Artscene Radio Talkshow) where he presented interviews and conversation with many different members of various computer art scenes. The show ran for roughly a year and totals ten hours.