12 ms·

Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany

1107 points by quakeguy 6y ago

jan_Inkepa 6y ago
I worry about anything heritage-/tourism-related being deeply conservative and possibly resulting in things getting fixed down or watered down, or otherwise ceasing to evolve/getting tied up with national/international bureaucratic apparatuses. But the people involved seem to be happy from what little I've seen (as an outsider), so it's probably ok here?
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  In that line of argument, we should destroy historic monuments and art museums, because they hold back art, and any building older than 30 years, because they hold back modern architecture. Preserving something good does not mean not accepting new developments. And sometimes, especially with architecture, "something good" can be an ensemble of stuff - e.g. you don't put a modernist glass/steel building on the town square of a picturesque medieval town.
  - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
    That's a fair point, though I think you're intensifying and extrapolating my feelings too far :P For some cultural/creative practices that are dear to me, I'd be ok with seeing them die out than become bureaucratised/preserved/reified. On the other hand, I love classical music, which could scarcely be less institutionalised and sclerotic, and I value historical, ethnographical and scholarly work about culture. I have all these slightly-conflicting feelings at once.
    - the_af 6y ago
      I'd rather they were preserved. I was never part of the demo scene (wrong continent, wrong age) but I feel amazed by it. I'm also interested in early home computers and early computers in general, and so I wish them to be available in some form I can touch, for example museums. It's tragic how much stuff related to computers, their history and their software we've lost already.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  I'd wager the demoscene is pretty conservative to begin with. All the comporules and jargon derive from the Warez/cracker scene in the late eighties and haven't really changed much since - only the capabilities of the hardware has. Eg: an "intro" means a demo made against a size limit. It's called an intro because cracked games were spread with little introductory animations (sine-scrollers, chiptunes, you know the drill) by the cracking groups. These couldn't take too much space lest the game got too big to easily distribute. Then, people started making intros without having a game to distribute them with, and the rest is history. But that's >30 years ago now and we still use the same term and the same size limits (4k, 64k) as back then.
SeeManDo 6y ago
Farbrausch!
- quakeguy 6y ago
  Blinkenlights!
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Sadly all my CPC/Amiga demos are lost to time.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  What was your CPC pseudonym?
  - sedatk 6y ago
    Probably Amstrad CPC, an 8-bit computer series mostly popular in Europe.
    - Narishma 6y ago
      That wasn't the question.
    - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
      Yes, I know; I was technical editor of the last surviving Amstrad CPC magazine in Britain. I was asking what pseudonym/handle GP wrote demos under - I wondered whether it was one I'd remember.
      - sedatk 6y ago
        Oops, got it. :)
- unixhero 6y ago
  If they were submitted to demo parties or shared in another fashion, the demoscene has it at pouet.net or demozoo.net or scene.org
adamnemecek 6y ago
I always wondered why demo scene was so culturally impactful in Europe but not in the US. I wonder if it’s due to the fact that Amiga was a lot more popular in Europe than US.
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  I would also argue that in the US, startup funding and entrepreneurship is a lot more available to people considered to be "inexperienced in business" by traditional banks, leading to creative energy in Europe instead flowing into more artistic endeavours. Also, note how the vast majority of demoscene groups were in Scandinavia, places with long winters.
- mjul 6y ago
  The Amiga was definitely a big factor. For one it was a “cathedral”, not a “bazaar” in the sense that it had more or less the same hardware on all models. The hardware was nicely balanced: small enough that you could learn it all, yet complex enough to keep tweaking and pushing its limits for a long time. It also had a long life, so you could get really good at it. People were using their 500s from the 80s well into the 90es. Contrast with his to PCs where there was a plethora of different hardware components for CPU models, graphics and sound - a “bazaar”. At the early stages the standardised Amiga was just much easier for the devs. Later the PCs became so powerful that the energy moved there anyway - but I still remember the shock of the terribly messy instruction set on the PCs after switching from the nice and clean 68k. For me personally that was when I stopped. It was simply not joyful to work with.
  - chihuahua 6y ago
    That's funny, I had the same reaction to the difference between the 68k and 80286 instruction sets. I enjoyed writing 68k assembly on an Amiga 1000. Then (around 1990) I got a 286 PC and looked at an assembly language book in a bookstore. I put the book back on the shelf and thought "this is horrible, I don't want to deal with this mess". I thought it was just me.
    - 6y ago
skrebbel 6y ago
I'm a (retired? infinitely procrastinating?) demoscener and to be frank I've never understood this effort. What does it help anyone that some bureacrats somewhere put the demoscene on the same list as folk dances, saunas, and "the Gastronomic meal of the French"? I mean sure, it's impressive that they pulled it off - I wouldn't expect whoever decides these things to understand much about computer art subcultures, but I don't know what the benefit is, to anyone. EDIT: I just realized that of course the answer is, like anything demosceners do, "because we can". What was I thinking?
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  Well, for starters, now funds can be allocated to preserve software and hardware that are necessary to keep experiencing the demoscene. Demoscene releases will be archived and - likely - added to secure vaults. 50, 100 or 500 years from now, the ones coming after us now have a better chance to experience Equinox, or Fairlight, or Melon Dezin the same way we today experience Brügel, or Dürer, or Cezanne. School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, and be eternally bored of it. And some enthusiasts will copy the techniques. It's not a bad thing, especially given the demoscene is bot extremely creative and absolutely nonexistant on today's art market, so will likely have disappeared with the demosceners in 20-50 years.
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    > Funds My understanding is that there's no free money attached to being on a UNESCO list.
    - DocTomoe 6y ago
      Not directly - but grants now can be argued with "this is actually UNESCO relevant". For an organization like the ZKM in Karlsruhe (a modern technology/art museum, which I would consider a major interest in this development), secondary, well-argued grants by local authorities and fonds are a major source of income.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
AndrewOMartin 6y ago
If they intend to maintain an archive of all the demos ever created then I will volunteer one of my old 128Mb USB drives to mirror it.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  That will fit approximately 1 modern demo, give or take.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    lol, considering that 4 kilobyte Windows executables are the cool thing these days, it would fit way more :P
  - abductee_hg 6y ago
    ehem...
- kaoD 6y ago
  Demos are still made nowadays. http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/ lists 84845 prods in archive (although that includes tools, engines, etc.) If you want to mirror, https://files.scene.org/faq/ https://files.scene.org/faq/ says its archive is about 2TB, or about 15625 of your old 128MB USB disks :P The archive from 1990 demoparties is already 5GB! I know your comment was probably tongue-in-cheek, I just wanted to share the actual numbers.
Damogran6 6y ago
Having experienced the Amiga and PC demoscenes when they were happening, this is one of those statements that comes as a surprise, but then, after a little consideration, makes perfect sense. It is celebrating a cultural movement during a moment in time.
varispeed 6y ago
Beautiful times. I especially loved swapping - that is you got a list of people and their addresses from a magazine and you saved on disks your favourite demos and zines (preferable those nobody else had) and then you added some random stuff for example label off your favourite drink, wrote some poems, maybe added a dried flower and so on and then you also added postage stamps. Then you were hoping that whoever received it on the other side liked it and he or she would have sent you something else. Sometimes you would just just pass on the disks you received and just added your name to a txt file or some funny looking directory. There was also a trick to put a glue over your stamps and it was the custom that the person would send you those stamps back so you could then dissolve the postage stamp and reuse them :-) The internet somewhat killed this unfortunately. Decades later I still remember the feeling of a postman holding packages in his hands from various places in the world and the excitement, what am I going to find? I miss that.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  You might enjoy Reddit’s secret Santa thing. It’s not demoscene oriented of course but the idea of sending and receiving random cheap gifts is neat. Plus a number of celebrities participate and when was the last time you participated in a gift exchange along with Ian McKellen?
  - morsch 6y ago
    Presumably the risk of receiving a bag of poop is suitably low?
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      The much bigger risk seems to be that you don’t get anything. But they have strict rules and if you don’t send your gift you can never do it again.
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      I participated this year and I wound up with a full book trilogy in a genre I really like and I wound up buying someone a relatively new video game for their current console. It was a very pleasant experience and I will now likely participate further. I think they've done it for 8 years now to good success.
drux 6y ago
Second Reality by Future Crew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTjnt_WSJu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTjnt_WSJu8 ( It is considered to be one of the best demos created during the early 1990s on the PC)
- someguyorother 6y ago
  And once you've finished that, go to Real Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1f6UE27KTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1f6UE27KTo Second Reality without a computer :)
  - BoDlulu 6y ago
    Hahahaha damn! This made my day!
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  That one blew me away. Another one I remember fondly is Dope by Complex[1], from 1995. My computer at the time could barely play the the soundtrack itself in the tracker, it had so many active channels. The demo itself was a slideshow. Fortunately my friend had a 486/DX4 100MHz, so I got to watch it there. To put this in perspective, there's no graphical acceleration involved here at all, everything pixel to be done on the CPU. And the microcontroller in the coffee maker at work is about as fast[2] as my friends 486[3]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtXxM0pezAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtXxM0pezAs [2]: https://blog.stratifylabs.co/device/2019-05-20-Dhrystone-Benchmarking-on-MCUs/ https://blog.stratifylabs.co/device/2019-05-20-Dhrystone-Ben... [3]: http://www.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html http://www.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.h...
- logbiscuitswave 6y ago
  I had a 386/40DX that could run Second Reality, and I was blown away. When I upgraded to a 486/66DX2 the first thing I did was run Second Reality, and I was shocked at how much of the demo content I had missed before from parts being truncated. Also it’s worth noting that a lot of Second Reality’s source code got released to GitHub several years back: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality and here’s an incredibly deep dive into the code: https://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/ https://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/ Finally, here’s some rare footage of the creation of the legendary demo: https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU (English subtitles available)
digikata 6y ago
This brings back memories of visiting the Computer game museum in Berlin. It’s a small museum dedicated to early computer games and also has preserved a number of early demos. Worth a visit if you ever find yourself with a couple hours of free time there. Oh they also have a working giant Atari and NES controller. https://www.computerspielemuseum.de https://www.computerspielemuseum.de https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187323-d2035268-Reviews-Computerspielemuseum-Berlin.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187323-d20352...
makach 6y ago
This is wonderful! It was a huge part of me when growing up, and I still bond with others when we discover our common past.
jexe 6y ago
Really excited to see this. Being part of the scene was absolutely fundamental to finding passion in tech and understanding how creative the process is at the core.
royjacobs 6y ago
I've enjoyed my time in the C64 and later the PC demoscene and I'm amazed it's still going pretty strong. Perhaps not on the level it was at during what was arguably its peak in the mid-90s, but still. It has certainly shaped a fairly large group of people currently working in our industry, even if they were only tangentially aware of the scene (perhaps with cracked games as a gateway drug, as it was in my case). Kudos for getting this organized.
tuukkah 6y ago
The bit of international significance: "As the previous decision in Finland helped convince the experts in Germany, today’s decision is a huge tailwind for the ongoing applications in other countries like France, Switzerland, and Poland. And the more countries will have listed the Demoscene, the more likely an international joint application for the Demoscene to be recognized as humanity’s cultural heritage becomes."
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> Today on the suggestion of the national Unesco expert committee, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs decided to accept the Demoscene as German intangible cultural heritage. The decision acknowledges the long and living tradition the Demoscene has in Germany, with Revision, Breakpoint, and Evoke among other demoparties shaping the landscape of major international gatherings of the demoscene for decades. Ah yes, the experts who arbitrary decide such matters based on politics and tourist revenue estimations. So has Currywürst been a part of German culture for decades, but apparently it is not included, perhaps because it's fastfood. — our overlords move in mysterious ways.
ahiknsr 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk -> Debris, winner of the demo competition at Breakpoint 2007 in Bingen, Germany.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Damn!
- SirYandi 6y ago
  I've still got this on one of my old hard drives, it's something like 150kb if I recall. Really quite amazing.
xallarap 6y ago
foreach x in UNESCO/cultural_heritage cancelculture(x) Or does this mean that it's exempt?
- exporectomy 6y ago
  They're not exempt from cancel culture. A few years ago, a festival in Europe was removed because it made fun of Jews. There isn't a lot of albino baby eating or sacrificing of slave girls either. It's kind of stupid as a long term preservation because everything is filtered through what's compatible with contemporary western culture. People have had the same canceling ideas before but with their own cultural filters. Iconoclasts destroyed ancient artwork, and Chinese communists destroyed ancient things in the cultural revolution. Imagine if all historical records of ancient Greece or Rome had been expunged of objectionable content as decided by every dominant culture that existed between then and now. We would have almost nothing left.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Why would anyone care what UNESCO bureaucrats proclaim is cultural heritage?
machawinka 6y ago
An NFT opportunity for the scammers out there?
msk-lywenn 6y ago
This comment section is missing something absolutely essential. Let's fix that right now: AMIGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
- aricz 6y ago
  *takes off his pants* AMIGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!
ttoinou 6y ago
This news comes right at the moment I am rendering demoscenes 4kb intro in 8K60 quality on YouTube :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bE1opaaJ0&list=PLbRiR5PpVynYGvZ4LWtfSy7uutszKJRvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bE1opaaJ0&list=PLbRiR5PpVy...
- fersarr 6y ago
  pretty cool!
spoonjim 6y ago
The UNESCO listing is a pretty big tent so this feels right. It’s not a Taj Mahal or Sydney Opera House but only a few things are.
- tgguhg 6y ago
  It's not a vague "UNESCO listing" in the same category as or competing with built heritage. It's specifically being recorded as intangible heritage, which is a category that covers a lot of interesting traditions, many fairly humble, such as craft techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Heritage_Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Her...
  - redwall_hp 6y ago
    This seems appropriate. My area has had a big outdoor traditional folk music festival for nearly twenty years (it ended pre-COVID though due to rising costs) so I've long had an appreciation for things like that. Irish and Acadian music, blues and jazz, sacred steel, Japanese drumming, Tuvan throat singing...there's a whole wealth of art out there that has historical and cultural importance, but will never be marketable in the mainstream. It's important to record and promote that. The Demoscene fits right in, as a short lived subculture that grew out of a radical democratization of technology.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
acd 6y ago
I love computer demos! Is there any good page / book / videos on how to make effects such as sinus scrollers, vector graphics and effects?
- dominicjj 6y ago
  For old school effects there's a pretty good page here with full source: http://demo-effects.sourceforge.net/ http://demo-effects.sourceforge.net/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ddingus 6y ago
Great! I love the scene. The art, and fun learning. Technical acumen coupled with art can speak to tech in a liberating and empowering way. And new tricks on old hardware. I always muse over what current gear could really do.
gsmo 6y ago
I believe this may have been the grandaddy of demos in Europe: Sodan & Magician 42 - TechTech - Amiga Demo https://youtu.be/mB5CujcTN8A https://youtu.be/mB5CujcTN8A
bane 6y ago
As a past and sometimes current demoscener, this warms my heart to see our art form recognized in this way. It's long been frustrating to see curations of digital art that conspicuously exclude the scene. And now the little subculture I participate in is suddenly internationally recognized! I truly hope that this means we'll start seeing curated digital art shows that are displays of the depth, breadth, and history of the scene. As a young wannabe technologist who grew up in very rural America. The scene was one of not only the first online scenes I encountered, but also some of the first people I regularly interacted with internationally...irrevocably bursting the insular bubble it's so easy to fall into in rural America.
jwiley 6y ago
This really made my day. I’ve marveled at the skill of demoscene folks for a long time, surely in the class of great artists and worth preserving and encouraging.
MrsPeaches 6y ago
There seem to be a fair few people who are part of the demoscene here, so I suppose this is as good a place as any to ask: What is the demoscene's take on NFTs? No horse in the race, just interested to hear what the general attitude is.
- MrsPeaches 6y ago
  I suppose the downvotes speak for themselves...
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
Ha, amazing timing, I was just talking about this a few days ago on that other thread about the c64 Mind Is Born demo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266
dedux 6y ago
Blown away by all the positive comments and stories relating to our initiative, thank you all for the good vibes and thoughtful comments, and for everybody being part or being inspired by the scene over the decades! And as always it's a team effort: https://twitter.com/Dedux/status/1374040818810548228?s=20 https://twitter.com/Dedux/status/1374040818810548228?s=20 & see also http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/supporters/ http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/supporters/ It will take some more years to get from a country level to an international application. So we are still looking for more (ex)-sceners and supporters helping to file applications in more countries - so if that resonates with you, don´t hesitate to get in touch or join our Discord. http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/demosceners/ http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/demosceners/ Thank you!

1107 points by quakeguy 6y ago

I worry about anything heritage-/tourism-related being deeply conservative and possibly resulting in things getting fixed down or watered down, or otherwise ceasing to evolve/getting tied up with national/international bureaucratic apparatuses. But the people involved seem to be happy from what little I've seen (as an outsider), so it's probably ok here?

DocTomoe 6y ago
In that line of argument, we should destroy historic monuments and art museums, because they hold back art, and any building older than 30 years, because they hold back modern architecture. Preserving something good does not mean not accepting new developments. And sometimes, especially with architecture, "something good" can be an ensemble of stuff - e.g. you don't put a modernist glass/steel building on the town square of a picturesque medieval town.
- jan_Inkepa 6y ago
  That's a fair point, though I think you're intensifying and extrapolating my feelings too far :P For some cultural/creative practices that are dear to me, I'd be ok with seeing them die out than become bureaucratised/preserved/reified. On the other hand, I love classical music, which could scarcely be less institutionalised and sclerotic, and I value historical, ethnographical and scholarly work about culture. I have all these slightly-conflicting feelings at once.
  - the_af 6y ago
    I'd rather they were preserved. I was never part of the demo scene (wrong continent, wrong age) but I feel amazed by it. I'm also interested in early home computers and early computers in general, and so I wish them to be available in some form I can touch, for example museums. It's tragic how much stuff related to computers, their history and their software we've lost already.
skrebbel 6y ago
I'd wager the demoscene is pretty conservative to begin with. All the comporules and jargon derive from the Warez/cracker scene in the late eighties and haven't really changed much since - only the capabilities of the hardware has. Eg: an "intro" means a demo made against a size limit. It's called an intro because cracked games were spread with little introductory animations (sine-scrollers, chiptunes, you know the drill) by the cracking groups. These couldn't take too much space lest the game got too big to easily distribute. Then, people started making intros without having a game to distribute them with, and the rest is history. But that's >30 years ago now and we still use the same term and the same size limits (4k, 64k) as back then.

SeeManDo 6y ago

Farbrausch!

quakeguy 6y ago
Blinkenlights!

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Sadly all my CPC/Amiga demos are lost to time.

Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
What was your CPC pseudonym?
- sedatk 6y ago
  Probably Amstrad CPC, an 8-bit computer series mostly popular in Europe.
  - Narishma 6y ago
    That wasn't the question.
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    Yes, I know; I was technical editor of the last surviving Amstrad CPC magazine in Britain. I was asking what pseudonym/handle GP wrote demos under - I wondered whether it was one I'd remember.
    - sedatk 6y ago
      Oops, got it. :)
unixhero 6y ago
If they were submitted to demo parties or shared in another fashion, the demoscene has it at pouet.net or demozoo.net or scene.org

adamnemecek 6y ago

I always wondered why demo scene was so culturally impactful in Europe but not in the US. I wonder if it’s due to the fact that Amiga was a lot more popular in Europe than US.

DocTomoe 6y ago
I would also argue that in the US, startup funding and entrepreneurship is a lot more available to people considered to be "inexperienced in business" by traditional banks, leading to creative energy in Europe instead flowing into more artistic endeavours. Also, note how the vast majority of demoscene groups were in Scandinavia, places with long winters.
mjul 6y ago
The Amiga was definitely a big factor. For one it was a “cathedral”, not a “bazaar” in the sense that it had more or less the same hardware on all models. The hardware was nicely balanced: small enough that you could learn it all, yet complex enough to keep tweaking and pushing its limits for a long time. It also had a long life, so you could get really good at it. People were using their 500s from the 80s well into the 90es. Contrast with his to PCs where there was a plethora of different hardware components for CPU models, graphics and sound - a “bazaar”. At the early stages the standardised Amiga was just much easier for the devs. Later the PCs became so powerful that the energy moved there anyway - but I still remember the shock of the terribly messy instruction set on the PCs after switching from the nice and clean 68k. For me personally that was when I stopped. It was simply not joyful to work with.
- chihuahua 6y ago
  That's funny, I had the same reaction to the difference between the 68k and 80286 instruction sets. I enjoyed writing 68k assembly on an Amiga 1000. Then (around 1990) I got a 286 PC and looked at an assembly language book in a bookstore. I put the book back on the shelf and thought "this is horrible, I don't want to deal with this mess". I thought it was just me.
  - 6y ago

skrebbel 6y ago

I'm a (retired? infinitely procrastinating?) demoscener and to be frank I've never understood this effort. What does it help anyone that some bureacrats somewhere put the demoscene on the same list as folk dances, saunas, and "the Gastronomic meal of the French"? I mean sure, it's impressive that they pulled it off - I wouldn't expect whoever decides these things to understand much about computer art subcultures, but I don't know what the benefit is, to anyone. EDIT: I just realized that of course the answer is, like anything demosceners do, "because we can". What was I thinking?

DocTomoe 6y ago
Well, for starters, now funds can be allocated to preserve software and hardware that are necessary to keep experiencing the demoscene. Demoscene releases will be archived and - likely - added to secure vaults. 50, 100 or 500 years from now, the ones coming after us now have a better chance to experience Equinox, or Fairlight, or Melon Dezin the same way we today experience Brügel, or Dürer, or Cezanne. School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, and be eternally bored of it. And some enthusiasts will copy the techniques. It's not a bad thing, especially given the demoscene is bot extremely creative and absolutely nonexistant on today's art market, so will likely have disappeared with the demosceners in 20-50 years.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  > Funds My understanding is that there's no free money attached to being on a UNESCO list.
  - DocTomoe 6y ago
    Not directly - but grants now can be argued with "this is actually UNESCO relevant". For an organization like the ZKM in Karlsruhe (a modern technology/art museum, which I would consider a major interest in this development), secondary, well-argued grants by local authorities and fonds are a major source of income.
- lallysingh 6y ago

AndrewOMartin 6y ago

If they intend to maintain an archive of all the demos ever created then I will volunteer one of my old 128Mb USB drives to mirror it.

skrebbel 6y ago
That will fit approximately 1 modern demo, give or take.
- floatboth 6y ago
  lol, considering that 4 kilobyte Windows executables are the cool thing these days, it would fit way more :P
- abductee_hg 6y ago
  ehem...
kaoD 6y ago
Demos are still made nowadays. http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/ lists 84845 prods in archive (although that includes tools, engines, etc.) If you want to mirror, https://files.scene.org/faq/ https://files.scene.org/faq/ says its archive is about 2TB, or about 15625 of your old 128MB USB disks :P The archive from 1990 demoparties is already 5GB! I know your comment was probably tongue-in-cheek, I just wanted to share the actual numbers.

Damogran6 6y ago

Having experienced the Amiga and PC demoscenes when they were happening, this is one of those statements that comes as a surprise, but then, after a little consideration, makes perfect sense. It is celebrating a cultural movement during a moment in time.

varispeed 6y ago

Beautiful times. I especially loved swapping - that is you got a list of people and their addresses from a magazine and you saved on disks your favourite demos and zines (preferable those nobody else had) and then you added some random stuff for example label off your favourite drink, wrote some poems, maybe added a dried flower and so on and then you also added postage stamps. Then you were hoping that whoever received it on the other side liked it and he or she would have sent you something else. Sometimes you would just just pass on the disks you received and just added your name to a txt file or some funny looking directory. There was also a trick to put a glue over your stamps and it was the custom that the person would send you those stamps back so you could then dissolve the postage stamp and reuse them :-) The internet somewhat killed this unfortunately. Decades later I still remember the feeling of a postman holding packages in his hands from various places in the world and the excitement, what am I going to find? I miss that.

IgorPartola 6y ago
You might enjoy Reddit’s secret Santa thing. It’s not demoscene oriented of course but the idea of sending and receiving random cheap gifts is neat. Plus a number of celebrities participate and when was the last time you participated in a gift exchange along with Ian McKellen?
- morsch 6y ago
  Presumably the risk of receiving a bag of poop is suitably low?
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    The much bigger risk seems to be that you don’t get anything. But they have strict rules and if you don’t send your gift you can never do it again.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    I participated this year and I wound up with a full book trilogy in a genre I really like and I wound up buying someone a relatively new video game for their current console. It was a very pleasant experience and I will now likely participate further. I think they've done it for 8 years now to good success.

drux 6y ago

Second Reality by Future Crew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTjnt_WSJu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTjnt_WSJu8 ( It is considered to be one of the best demos created during the early 1990s on the PC)

someguyorother 6y ago
And once you've finished that, go to Real Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1f6UE27KTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1f6UE27KTo Second Reality without a computer :)
- BoDlulu 6y ago
  Hahahaha damn! This made my day!
magicalhippo 6y ago
That one blew me away. Another one I remember fondly is Dope by Complex[1], from 1995. My computer at the time could barely play the the soundtrack itself in the tracker, it had so many active channels. The demo itself was a slideshow. Fortunately my friend had a 486/DX4 100MHz, so I got to watch it there. To put this in perspective, there's no graphical acceleration involved here at all, everything pixel to be done on the CPU. And the microcontroller in the coffee maker at work is about as fast[2] as my friends 486[3]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtXxM0pezAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtXxM0pezAs [2]: https://blog.stratifylabs.co/device/2019-05-20-Dhrystone-Benchmarking-on-MCUs/ https://blog.stratifylabs.co/device/2019-05-20-Dhrystone-Ben... [3]: http://www.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html http://www.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.h...
logbiscuitswave 6y ago
I had a 386/40DX that could run Second Reality, and I was blown away. When I upgraded to a 486/66DX2 the first thing I did was run Second Reality, and I was shocked at how much of the demo content I had missed before from parts being truncated. Also it’s worth noting that a lot of Second Reality’s source code got released to GitHub several years back: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality and here’s an incredibly deep dive into the code: https://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/ https://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/ Finally, here’s some rare footage of the creation of the legendary demo: https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU (English subtitles available)

digikata 6y ago

This brings back memories of visiting the Computer game museum in Berlin. It’s a small museum dedicated to early computer games and also has preserved a number of early demos. Worth a visit if you ever find yourself with a couple hours of free time there. Oh they also have a working giant Atari and NES controller. https://www.computerspielemuseum.de https://www.computerspielemuseum.de https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187323-d2035268-Reviews-Computerspielemuseum-Berlin.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187323-d20352...

makach 6y ago

This is wonderful! It was a huge part of me when growing up, and I still bond with others when we discover our common past.

jexe 6y ago

Really excited to see this. Being part of the scene was absolutely fundamental to finding passion in tech and understanding how creative the process is at the core.

royjacobs 6y ago

I've enjoyed my time in the C64 and later the PC demoscene and I'm amazed it's still going pretty strong. Perhaps not on the level it was at during what was arguably its peak in the mid-90s, but still. It has certainly shaped a fairly large group of people currently working in our industry, even if they were only tangentially aware of the scene (perhaps with cracked games as a gateway drug, as it was in my case). Kudos for getting this organized.

tuukkah 6y ago

The bit of international significance: "As the previous decision in Finland helped convince the experts in Germany, today’s decision is a huge tailwind for the ongoing applications in other countries like France, Switzerland, and Poland. And the more countries will have listed the Demoscene, the more likely an international joint application for the Demoscene to be recognized as humanity’s cultural heritage becomes."

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

> Today on the suggestion of the national Unesco expert committee, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs decided to accept the Demoscene as German intangible cultural heritage. The decision acknowledges the long and living tradition the Demoscene has in Germany, with Revision, Breakpoint, and Evoke among other demoparties shaping the landscape of major international gatherings of the demoscene for decades. Ah yes, the experts who arbitrary decide such matters based on politics and tourist revenue estimations. So has Currywürst been a part of German culture for decades, but apparently it is not included, perhaps because it's fastfood. — our overlords move in mysterious ways.

ahiknsr 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk -> Debris, winner of the demo competition at Breakpoint 2007 in Bingen, Germany.

8bitsrule 6y ago
Damn!
SirYandi 6y ago
I've still got this on one of my old hard drives, it's something like 150kb if I recall. Really quite amazing.

xallarap 6y ago

foreach x in UNESCO/cultural_heritage cancelculture(x) Or does this mean that it's exempt?

exporectomy 6y ago
They're not exempt from cancel culture. A few years ago, a festival in Europe was removed because it made fun of Jews. There isn't a lot of albino baby eating or sacrificing of slave girls either. It's kind of stupid as a long term preservation because everything is filtered through what's compatible with contemporary western culture. People have had the same canceling ideas before but with their own cultural filters. Iconoclasts destroyed ancient artwork, and Chinese communists destroyed ancient things in the cultural revolution. Imagine if all historical records of ancient Greece or Rome had been expunged of objectionable content as decided by every dominant culture that existed between then and now. We would have almost nothing left.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Why would anyone care what UNESCO bureaucrats proclaim is cultural heritage?

machawinka 6y ago

An NFT opportunity for the scammers out there?

msk-lywenn 6y ago

This comment section is missing something absolutely essential. Let's fix that right now: AMIGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

aricz 6y ago
*takes off his pants* AMIGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

ttoinou 6y ago

This news comes right at the moment I am rendering demoscenes 4kb intro in 8K60 quality on YouTube :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bE1opaaJ0&list=PLbRiR5PpVynYGvZ4LWtfSy7uutszKJRvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bE1opaaJ0&list=PLbRiR5PpVy...

fersarr 6y ago
pretty cool!

spoonjim 6y ago

The UNESCO listing is a pretty big tent so this feels right. It’s not a Taj Mahal or Sydney Opera House but only a few things are.

tgguhg 6y ago
It's not a vague "UNESCO listing" in the same category as or competing with built heritage. It's specifically being recorded as intangible heritage, which is a category that covers a lot of interesting traditions, many fairly humble, such as craft techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Heritage_Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Her...
- redwall_hp 6y ago
  This seems appropriate. My area has had a big outdoor traditional folk music festival for nearly twenty years (it ended pre-COVID though due to rising costs) so I've long had an appreciation for things like that. Irish and Acadian music, blues and jazz, sacred steel, Japanese drumming, Tuvan throat singing...there's a whole wealth of art out there that has historical and cultural importance, but will never be marketable in the mainstream. It's important to record and promote that. The Demoscene fits right in, as a short lived subculture that grew out of a radical democratization of technology.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

acd 6y ago

I love computer demos! Is there any good page / book / videos on how to make effects such as sinus scrollers, vector graphics and effects?

dominicjj 6y ago
For old school effects there's a pretty good page here with full source: http://demo-effects.sourceforge.net/ http://demo-effects.sourceforge.net/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ddingus 6y ago

Great! I love the scene. The art, and fun learning. Technical acumen coupled with art can speak to tech in a liberating and empowering way. And new tricks on old hardware. I always muse over what current gear could really do.

gsmo 6y ago

I believe this may have been the grandaddy of demos in Europe: Sodan & Magician 42 - TechTech - Amiga Demo https://youtu.be/mB5CujcTN8A https://youtu.be/mB5CujcTN8A

bane 6y ago

As a past and sometimes current demoscener, this warms my heart to see our art form recognized in this way. It's long been frustrating to see curations of digital art that conspicuously exclude the scene. And now the little subculture I participate in is suddenly internationally recognized! I truly hope that this means we'll start seeing curated digital art shows that are displays of the depth, breadth, and history of the scene. As a young wannabe technologist who grew up in very rural America. The scene was one of not only the first online scenes I encountered, but also some of the first people I regularly interacted with internationally...irrevocably bursting the insular bubble it's so easy to fall into in rural America.

jwiley 6y ago

This really made my day. I’ve marveled at the skill of demoscene folks for a long time, surely in the class of great artists and worth preserving and encouraging.

MrsPeaches 6y ago

There seem to be a fair few people who are part of the demoscene here, so I suppose this is as good a place as any to ask: What is the demoscene's take on NFTs? No horse in the race, just interested to hear what the general attitude is.

MrsPeaches 6y ago
I suppose the downvotes speak for themselves...

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

Ha, amazing timing, I was just talking about this a few days ago on that other thread about the c64 Mind Is Born demo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266

dedux 6y ago

Blown away by all the positive comments and stories relating to our initiative, thank you all for the good vibes and thoughtful comments, and for everybody being part or being inspired by the scene over the decades! And as always it's a team effort: https://twitter.com/Dedux/status/1374040818810548228?s=20 https://twitter.com/Dedux/status/1374040818810548228?s=20 & see also http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/supporters/ http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/supporters/ It will take some more years to get from a country level to an international application. So we are still looking for more (ex)-sceners and supporters helping to file applications in more countries - so if that resonates with you, don´t hesitate to get in touch or join our Discord. http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/demosceners/ http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/demosceners/ Thank you!