7 ms·

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 somewhe

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
  Also, it pushes for some preservation of the execution environments of these programs. It's now more likely that someone will make sure that there's a runnable version of qemu (or similar) that emulates well enough to run them.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  TRSI!
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  " School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, and be eternally bored of it." I hope not. Forcing anyone into it, kills the spirit of it, they were supposed to find. But that would be nothing new with classical school, so ..
- zem 6y ago
  I think the analogy an earlier poster made with folk dances was more accurate. school classes might mention it in passing as a subculture, and people who want to know will have resources to explore it further.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, Highly doubtful claim.
varispeed 6y ago
If something becomes a thing in bureaucrats world then it also means it opens a door for receiving funding. Then your family member or friend create a foundation or something and then apply for those funds. Maybe they ran out of things and figured out there was something called demoscene. They don't do it out of good will. At least not in my opinion based on experience.
- feralimal 6y ago
  And funding is the stealing of money (taxes) from individuals, being re-allocated to things bureaucrats like to foster. Hurrah!
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    There's a good chance the funding will come from charities. Most likely ones funded by people who made money in computers.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      Nah! They're too busy using their charities to fund the guardian, NYT and WHO.
  - piva00 6y ago
    Because the market is perfect and will foster the most beautiful arts efficiently, right? There is some requirement for coordination in a societal level, taking taxes to fund what bureaucrats like to foster is imperfect but so far looks like the better alternative than just letting private and profit-driven interests drive what's culture or not. What's your alternative?
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Some of the best and most innovative art I've seen was developed wholly by public funding. I can't imagine how it is in the USA, where art lives and dies by how marketable it is. It occurs to me that the (newer) experimental art I have seen from America was developed by wealthy people with loads of free time; the era of wandering jazz and blues musicians having long since passed.
blondin 6y ago
this is so the scene could be remembered. be it unesco, internet archive, the big museums, whatever works. as we are losing more and more control over the hardware and software that we buy, the scene and anything similar will ultimately disappear.
- gcb0 6y ago
  demoscene reason d'etre is antithetical to museums. But i think this is very fitting for a time when, as you say, "we are losing more and more control over the hardware and software that we buy" This may be a huge ego trip or pure gatekeeping, but I never wrote anything that I expected people to run, look at the pretty pixels, and be done. You cannot be truly impressed if you don't know the effort to put that art into a tiny file or abuse the hardware in ways never seen before. If you never fired a debugger or other development/reverse engineering tool, then you missed most it had to offer. And IMHO you never connected to the artist in any way.
  - hrydgard 6y ago
    If pouet.net isn't a huge museum, then what is it?
    - skrebbel 6y ago
      A cesspool of trolls? :-) (not saying it isn't also a huge museum btw)
bstar77 6y ago
Maybe exposure? I wasn't involved in the scene creatively, but I did experience it in all its glory in the early 90's. I was blown away by the creativity and it was the highlight of running my BBS. Your negativity is kind of disappointing, you don't have to be so punk about it. We're all old now.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  Why the personal attack?
  - ddingus 6y ago
    The comment spoke to behavior, not the person. This is often conflated into a personal attack, and it should not be. What we do is not who we are, just saying.
    - tim44 6y ago
      Ahh yes, the old I didn't call you a b#tch, I said you are acting like a b#tch ;)
      - ddingus 6y ago
        That's legit! Seriously. We have a lot of angst online for failure to understand this distinction. Take a basic scenario: Good person gets called out for doing shitty things vs bad person getting called out doing shitty things. What's the difference? In terms of the shitty things? No difference at all. Doing shitty things is undesirable. Where to go from there? Personal judgement, and that's where the real personal attack actually is. Frankly, failure to grok that diminishes the value of an actual personal attack while also at the same time marginalizing discussion on behavior that is or may not be shitty. And here's a variation on that for you, just for shits and giggles: You know, I've heard other people say you are a dick, but never believed it until now. LOL Where did I get that one? My wife said it to a policeman who had just got done beating me up in my driveway because I would not allow access into my home without a warrant. Yes, I grinned. Got the message across without actually speaking to them as a person. Truth is, their action did all the telling necessary. One last variation on this: Say we've got a racist handy and they do or say something basically racist. We could declare, "you are a racist!" and render personal judgement and trigger a whole bunch of discussion that won't get anyone anywhere, but it may be gratifying. Or, we could say, "that comes off as racist, are you sure you want to go there?" Or some variation on that. The difference, while subtle, is in the former case we've made a personal judgement that is hard to get away from, or past. The latter is speaking to behavior. People can make different choices later on, entertain advocacy, even ask for help having never been judged. Getting past that is an order easier. ...all of which is why people dislike personal attacks! Who likes being judged? I don't. And there we are back to this whole thing. Nobody judged anyone. They communicated how behavior comes off to others and that's it. Since there was no judgement, no personal attack, all it really boils down to some feedback that the commenter can use to make different choices in the future, or not, no worries at all. This meta discussion, is unfortunate, but worth it, if any passers by take away the difference.
agumonkey 6y ago
you're in null demo mode, waiting for v-sync to trigger
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
History is worth preserving. When future generations examine what kind of art we made, we want them to discover demoscene art as part of that. It is a huge disservice to both the creators as well as the students by omitting it from the historical record.
bloodorange 6y ago
It also serves to offer some protection against future attempts to outlaw it. Given how much of general purpose computation we lose every year to walled-gardens/prisons, I think it might help a wee bit now and then.
halcy 6y ago
It presumably helps somewhat if you want to find sponsors, or locations to hold parties, if you can point at an official list on which you are and say "look! this is a real thing! important people think this is worth doing!" Other than that, well, there really isn't a downside, so yeah, why not.
freeflight 6y ago
For a very relevant example in Germany: Getting recognized as "art" or "culturally relevant" affords certain protections against media censorship that consumer media usually don't get. Censorship that contrary to popular belief is not only reserved to Nazi themes/glorification but can also happen over too gruesome depictions of violence and other topics edging on the Overton window. Which in practice lead to the reality that the original Doom game, an undeniable cornerstone of modern video-game culture which has by now become very much mainstream, used to be banned in Germany, in it's censored German version until 2011, the original US version of Doom II was only "unbanned" in 2019 [0] The long term consequences of decades of activism about "video games and violence" [1] coupled with a complete disregard of the idea that such a new digital medium could contribute in any meaningful ways to society. [0] https://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=15460 https://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=15460 [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killerspiel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killerspiel
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
ha, upvote for the realization "because we can". Perfect

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
Also, it pushes for some preservation of the execution environments of these programs. It's now more likely that someone will make sure that there's a runnable version of qemu (or similar) that emulates well enough to run them.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
TRSI!
hutzlibu 6y ago
" School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, and be eternally bored of it." I hope not. Forcing anyone into it, kills the spirit of it, they were supposed to find. But that would be nothing new with classical school, so ..
zem 6y ago
I think the analogy an earlier poster made with folk dances was more accurate. school classes might mention it in passing as a subculture, and people who want to know will have resources to explore it further.
ekianjo 6y ago
> School classes will analyze the hacks necessary for a parallax scroller, Highly doubtful claim.

varispeed 6y ago

If something becomes a thing in bureaucrats world then it also means it opens a door for receiving funding. Then your family member or friend create a foundation or something and then apply for those funds. Maybe they ran out of things and figured out there was something called demoscene. They don't do it out of good will. At least not in my opinion based on experience.

feralimal 6y ago
And funding is the stealing of money (taxes) from individuals, being re-allocated to things bureaucrats like to foster. Hurrah!
- lallysingh 6y ago
  There's a good chance the funding will come from charities. Most likely ones funded by people who made money in computers.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Nah! They're too busy using their charities to fund the guardian, NYT and WHO.
- piva00 6y ago
  Because the market is perfect and will foster the most beautiful arts efficiently, right? There is some requirement for coordination in a societal level, taking taxes to fund what bureaucrats like to foster is imperfect but so far looks like the better alternative than just letting private and profit-driven interests drive what's culture or not. What's your alternative?
  - dleslie 6y ago
    Some of the best and most innovative art I've seen was developed wholly by public funding. I can't imagine how it is in the USA, where art lives and dies by how marketable it is. It occurs to me that the (newer) experimental art I have seen from America was developed by wealthy people with loads of free time; the era of wandering jazz and blues musicians having long since passed.

blondin 6y ago

this is so the scene could be remembered. be it unesco, internet archive, the big museums, whatever works. as we are losing more and more control over the hardware and software that we buy, the scene and anything similar will ultimately disappear.

gcb0 6y ago
demoscene reason d'etre is antithetical to museums. But i think this is very fitting for a time when, as you say, "we are losing more and more control over the hardware and software that we buy" This may be a huge ego trip or pure gatekeeping, but I never wrote anything that I expected people to run, look at the pretty pixels, and be done. You cannot be truly impressed if you don't know the effort to put that art into a tiny file or abuse the hardware in ways never seen before. If you never fired a debugger or other development/reverse engineering tool, then you missed most it had to offer. And IMHO you never connected to the artist in any way.
- hrydgard 6y ago
  If pouet.net isn't a huge museum, then what is it?
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    A cesspool of trolls? :-) (not saying it isn't also a huge museum btw)

bstar77 6y ago

Maybe exposure? I wasn't involved in the scene creatively, but I did experience it in all its glory in the early 90's. I was blown away by the creativity and it was the highlight of running my BBS. Your negativity is kind of disappointing, you don't have to be so punk about it. We're all old now.

skrebbel 6y ago
Why the personal attack?
- ddingus 6y ago
  The comment spoke to behavior, not the person. This is often conflated into a personal attack, and it should not be. What we do is not who we are, just saying.
  - tim44 6y ago
    Ahh yes, the old I didn't call you a b#tch, I said you are acting like a b#tch ;)
    - ddingus 6y ago
      That's legit! Seriously. We have a lot of angst online for failure to understand this distinction. Take a basic scenario: Good person gets called out for doing shitty things vs bad person getting called out doing shitty things. What's the difference? In terms of the shitty things? No difference at all. Doing shitty things is undesirable. Where to go from there? Personal judgement, and that's where the real personal attack actually is. Frankly, failure to grok that diminishes the value of an actual personal attack while also at the same time marginalizing discussion on behavior that is or may not be shitty. And here's a variation on that for you, just for shits and giggles: You know, I've heard other people say you are a dick, but never believed it until now. LOL Where did I get that one? My wife said it to a policeman who had just got done beating me up in my driveway because I would not allow access into my home without a warrant. Yes, I grinned. Got the message across without actually speaking to them as a person. Truth is, their action did all the telling necessary. One last variation on this: Say we've got a racist handy and they do or say something basically racist. We could declare, "you are a racist!" and render personal judgement and trigger a whole bunch of discussion that won't get anyone anywhere, but it may be gratifying. Or, we could say, "that comes off as racist, are you sure you want to go there?" Or some variation on that. The difference, while subtle, is in the former case we've made a personal judgement that is hard to get away from, or past. The latter is speaking to behavior. People can make different choices later on, entertain advocacy, even ask for help having never been judged. Getting past that is an order easier. ...all of which is why people dislike personal attacks! Who likes being judged? I don't. And there we are back to this whole thing. Nobody judged anyone. They communicated how behavior comes off to others and that's it. Since there was no judgement, no personal attack, all it really boils down to some feedback that the commenter can use to make different choices in the future, or not, no worries at all. This meta discussion, is unfortunate, but worth it, if any passers by take away the difference.

agumonkey 6y ago

you're in null demo mode, waiting for v-sync to trigger

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

History is worth preserving. When future generations examine what kind of art we made, we want them to discover demoscene art as part of that. It is a huge disservice to both the creators as well as the students by omitting it from the historical record.

bloodorange 6y ago

It also serves to offer some protection against future attempts to outlaw it. Given how much of general purpose computation we lose every year to walled-gardens/prisons, I think it might help a wee bit now and then.

halcy 6y ago

It presumably helps somewhat if you want to find sponsors, or locations to hold parties, if you can point at an official list on which you are and say "look! this is a real thing! important people think this is worth doing!" Other than that, well, there really isn't a downside, so yeah, why not.

freeflight 6y ago

For a very relevant example in Germany: Getting recognized as "art" or "culturally relevant" affords certain protections against media censorship that consumer media usually don't get. Censorship that contrary to popular belief is not only reserved to Nazi themes/glorification but can also happen over too gruesome depictions of violence and other topics edging on the Overton window. Which in practice lead to the reality that the original Doom game, an undeniable cornerstone of modern video-game culture which has by now become very much mainstream, used to be banned in Germany, in it's censored German version until 2011, the original US version of Doom II was only "unbanned" in 2019 [0] The long term consequences of decades of activism about "video games and violence" [1] coupled with a complete disregard of the idea that such a new digital medium could contribute in any meaningful ways to society. [0] https://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=15460 https://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=15460 [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killerspiel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killerspiel

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

ha, upvote for the realization "because we can". Perfect