Kristen Roos is a Canadian artist and educator based in Vancouver who makes pixel art with vintage paint software for early personal computers.,He holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of Victoria.His research into the history of personal-computer paint software has led him to collect the original hardware and work with both it and its emulated versions.
His research into vintage software has led him to collect original hardware, including the Apple IIe, Atari 800XL, Commodore 64, Macintosh, and Amiga, which he uses alongside emulated versions of the same machines. A central technique in his work is color cycling, or palette shifting, a method developed for early paint programs such as Deluxe Paint to simulate animation in a still image while using very little memory.In 2023 he showed SOLID-STATE and SOLID-STATE: TV in “The Pixel Generation”, a joint exhibition by Unit London and Right Click Save.,He has also released Amiga animation made with Deluxe Paint IV as NFTs on Foundation, Objkt, and SuperRare.
Beyond pixel art, Roos works in electronic and electroacoustic music, sound installation, radio and transmission art, printmaking, and textiles, framing his practice through media archaeology and the history of computing.His textile work traces the historical link between weaving, the Jacquard loom, and computing, connecting that history to early paint software and pixel art.,For Universal Synthesizer Interface, a two-volume music project begun in 2020, he composed using algorithmic MIDI sequencing software originally written in the 1980s and 1990s for the Commodore Amiga, 68k Macintosh, and Atari ST. The title borrows the name Dave Smith proposed in 1981 for what became the MIDI standard.
