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Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands
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- waihtis 3y agoFinland also did the same thing in 2020: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/finland-recognises-the-demoscene-as-part-of-its-cultural-heritage https://www.gamesindustry.biz/finland-recognises-the-demosce...
- Vinnl 3y agoThe article mentions Germany and Poland as well, and the potential for a joint international application.
- glonq 3y agoThose Finns are incredible. I'd like to think that I might have been a great programmer if only I lived in a place where there is no sun for half the year! /s
- waihtis 3y agoit does naturally encourage you to sit on the computer...
- ginko 3y agoSo what does this mean in practice? Financial supports for demoscene events?
- michelb 3y agoNo, it just means recognition and helps with awareness. Any support needs to come from the community.
- bayindirh 3y agoThere's some information: http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/2023/02/03/unesco-status-helps-aquiring-budget-for-reach-out/ http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/2023/02/03/unesco-sta...
- skrebbel 3y agoI once asked the people behind this effort and my understanding is that they don’t really know either. It’s just internet points I guess, except not with points and not on the internet.
- hutzlibu 3y agoIt probably helps whenever you deal with officials. Doing graphical things with computer (computer games?) vs. participating in something recognized by UNESCO as cultural heritage. That should open some doors, if you are planning to do an event or course around it.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoIt would likely help them get funding much more easily than earlier.
- skrebbel 3y agoYeah but which officials? The demoscene doesn't really need permission for anything. That’s almost a cultural value. I organized a few demoparties back in the day and it’s really just, rent a place where loud music is ok, get people to come. Lots to plan and arrange ofc, but nothing that needs permission or money from bobos. Maybe the bigger parties like Revision can use this to get permits etc but I think all things considered it won’t have a major impact on anything tangible. It’s just cool, recognition.
- hutzlibu 3y agoWell first, kudos to you, to just organize it. That's the spirit, I know. "Yeah but which officials?" School rectors for example. Local mayors. The types who can give access to big rooms, you can rent for free, if what you do is considered "cultural". (but yes, there is the danger of doing it all very tame then)
- pengaru 3y agoIt doesn't hurt to have something like UNESCO legitimizing the medium. I've attended a few demo parties (US), some were hosted at unis, all were organized by youths, and it's never been trivial to get permission to use the facilities. Especially when the intent is inviting dozens to hundreds of total strangers for a long-weekend sleepover ostensibly to program for two-three days straight.
- amelius 3y agoIt means demos are now protected by law and thus a lot of limitations and bureaucracy around the development of new demos. Just kidding, I have no idea :)
- spitfire 3y agoNo, it’s means it’s only a demo if it comes from The Uusimaa region of Finland, otherwise it’s just sparkling graphical effects.
- somenits 3y agoIt's just recognition by a UN body. If you'll indulge some cynicism, all it really means is that a bunch of people spent your tax money (which funds the UN through member-state contributions) to sit around (and expense a bunch of pointless travel) pontificating on what's worthy of recognition.
- bayindirh 3y agoThis is great to hear. Demoscene is one of the most influential things I have came across my entire life, and changed how I code forever. I remember watching Farbrausch's "fr-08 .the .produkt" [0] when it came out and telling myself "If a computer can do this with 64KB of data, at this speed, my programs should be able to do the same, or at least shall be close". I was forever poisoned at this point, and this simple sentence shaped my whole academic life and career. [0]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221 P.S.: Rewatching it, again, for the nth time. Hats off to chaos, fiver2, kb, doj, ryg & yoda. P.P.S: I show people YouTube version of Elevated (https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938), and ask them to guess the binary size rendering this thing in real time. The answer blows everyone's mind, every time.
- exitb 3y agoThat thumbnail for Elevated is an order of magnitude bigger than the demo.
- scoot 3y agoThe YouTube video in question: https://youtu.be/eGdUDGo2Gxw https://youtu.be/eGdUDGo2Gxw The title says 4kb, but I assume it's 4KB, which is impressive but not mind blowing for a procedurally generated landscape.
- bayindirh 3y agoConsidering you have the music, lighting, texture changes and everything else, it's still indeed impressive for a procedurally generated landscape. It might not be the most impressive demo tech-wise, but it's one of the best executed ones, and it matters. Also it's the second most loved prod in pouet.net, which means something.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoWhen I download it, it's indeed 4KB not 4kb. I still think it's really impressive for the entire demo though. It's not just a procedurally generated landscape, it's the camera and scene changes, it's the lighting, the spotlights and music.
- pixelpoet 3y agoGreat news! Best art thing to ever spontaneously appear, if only it were a thing in South Africa in the 90s :/
- smokel 3y agoPerhaps it was? This list on Pouet shows a few demo groups and releases from South Africa: https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=221 https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=221
- skrebbel 3y agoDenthor, author of a famous series of democoding tutorials from the late nineties [0] was from South Africa [0] http://www.textfiles.com/programming/astrainer.txt http://www.textfiles.com/programming/astrainer.txt (key quote:) [ There they sit, the preschooler class encircling their mentor, the substitute teacher. "Now class, today we will talk about what you want to be when you grow up. Isn't that fun?" The teacher looks around and spots the child, silent, apart from the others and deep in thought. "Jonny, why don't you start?" she encourages him. Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye. "I want to code demos," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confidant as he speaks. "I want to write something that will change peoples perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I want to write demos." Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman." ]
- pixelpoet 3y agoYep! There were also some fledgling groups but it never amounted to much, the demoparties that were attempted were very small and it basically never hit critical mass like it did in Europe.
- skrebbel 3y agoNot just the Demoscene! Also the Twentse Krentewegge, the best sweet bread of the world. My mom (krentewegge) and myself (demoscene) are equally thrilled.
- jansan 3y ago> the best sweet bread of the world Yeah, right, let's just ignore panettone exists for a moment.
- gattilorenz 3y agoThey compete in different leagues, panettone is a seasonal sweet bread, krentenwegge is a daily sweet bread
- mdp2021 3y agoSo, where should one eat the best krentenwegge in the World, presumably in (which place in) the Netherlands? I have good information that the best panettone could be at the Pasticceria Roletti, in San Giorgio Canavese, in northern Piedmont.
- skrebbel 3y agoAny bakery in Twente
- gattilorenz 3y agoBakkerij Nollen in Enschede is somewhat famous, but to be honest it’s going to be “lekker” ar most bakeries… enjoy with a cup of coffee and spread a bit of butter on it for the perfect experience
- skrebbel 3y agoThis is basically the FT2 vs IT debate all over again. (FastTracker is better though)
- 3y ago
- kome 3y agothis is so cool i can't even!!! when the hakken as a traditional dance?
- djxfade 3y agoFor real though, Gabber and its culture should definetly get recognized as cultural heritage. To this day what it spawned has a tremendous influence in the rave scene, and Hardcore is still relatively huge. I attended Thunderdome last year for its 30 year anniversary. It was incredible
- smokel 3y agoYou might like Gabberhammer by JCO, which is at the exact intersection of both subcultures. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=15102 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=15102
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoThis means that as an art form, its dead. Which seems about right.
- GuB-42 3y ago"The scene is dead" meme has been around for quite a while. So much that now, it is most often used sarcastically, like when a new group releases something cool.
- skrebbel 3y agoI joined the scene in 1997 and in 1998 I wrote my first "Is the scene dead?" diskmag article.
- Findecanor 3y agoThere are dozens of high-quality demos released every year. The state of the art has also been progressing. Some of the things coded on the C64 these days are things that I found too difficult to do on the Amiga back in the '90s when I was active.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoI‘m aware. It is also a fact that the average age of the participants is rising. The foundation of the subculture and its cultural cachet was always the warez scene where it originated, revolving around tight-knit groups of young dudes that participated in a forbidden pleasure and formed tribes that competed with each other. That energy is dead and gone. Once something hangs in a museum, its still art, but it is no longer alive, no longer evolving and becoming.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoLoved being part of the demo scene in the 80s and 90s. Learned so much, still proud of what we squeezed out of 8/16 bit computers. Luckily never got caught ;-)
- TwentyPosts 3y agoMeanwhile, I am still trying to figure out how to really get started with making my first demos. I can write a basic shader with ShaderToy, I can write a raymarching algorithm and do a few cute tricks with it...and now what? How do I turn this into a "proper" demo? Even just guidelines on the entire compilation step would be appreciated, or knowledge on how some fairly standard examples of demos were compiled, and which tools were used.
- AndriyKunitsyn 3y agoI used https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ to get started. The main ingredient of the secret sauce is a special compressing linker, called crinkler.
- TwentyPosts 3y agoAh, that Linux user feeling. Feels like a lot of people in the scene use Windows, which still surprises me considering how tech-y it all is.
- skrebbel 3y agoWindows used to be the only platform where even half baked graphics code could be assumed to run properly most places, due to its position as the primary OS for gaming. All the graphics cards had drivers, direct3d came bundled in etc. It was just easier. Dont forget that most democoders want to make stuff. Something like Visual Studio, which you can (pirate and) install, and then you type code and press a button with a play icon and see the code run, that’s super nice and it’s had that UX for 20 years or so. Compared to Linux at the time, which drew the kinds of people who enjoyed building up their perfect Gentoo from scratch and setting up their Vim just right, and making automake detect dependencies on all the distros. To your average demoscener, all that stuff gets in the way of getting graphics on the screen. These days the difference is pretty much gone though, so it’s just momentum. You can install Ubuntu and a random IDE and code some opengl in an SDL window and things will Just Work just like they would on Windows. And I assume even Linux these days has a way to deal with dependencies that’s as easy for devs as Windows’s “just add the DLLs you need to the zip file”.
- imiric 3y agoWell deserved! Demos are a marvel of art and engineering, and their authors are wizards, AFAIC. I've always been amazed at the sheer skill and creativity of the programmers in this subculture, to the point where I consider them to be in an entirely different league from the "regular" programmer building web, desktop, mobile and enterprise apps using some high-level language, of which I'm humbly a part of. Demo programmers can seemingly control electrons at their will, and mostly do so for fun and pleasure, whereas we work with layers and layers of abstractions and mostly for compensation. I'm not saying that the world doesn't need both, just that one is more aligned to that child-like curiosity and wonder at making lights blink, taken to an extreme level, which is IMO a purer reason to love computers.
- p0nce 3y agoEr, we once win a "scene award" with a demo. You are right there was plenty of talented programmers there (and the level has only gone up), but this is also an _art_ scene and to be able to work so long for free on something that won't make any money (and that you can only present at a single event) in the end you need to either have a job developing 3D software, and/or be independently affluent. I was happy to leave the scene quickly as I feel it wasn't very respectful, when you release something you can see your "competitors" send harsh comments and tell you your thing sucks, unlike any other scene (?). This doesn't make sense, when people are in music they don't go around telling other people their music suck. Also, demoscene is pure greenfield, you can learn more working in maintenance programming.
- whizzter 3y agoI'm not gonna say you're wrong in your experiences, because there's much damnning about how people have behaved, but it needs to be taken in stride and things have changed a bit. The demoscene always did sit in a weird intersection between technology and art, and the roots and association with piracy (that often in the beginning in large parts were teenage ganglike groups) did add a distinct "harshly" competitive edge you don't see in other art perhaps with the exception of hiphop. However, 2 factors is changing things out to a mellower experience, one is that people have grown older and there's probably a realization for many who still participate about our mortality as people literally start to die off and few fresh faces appear. The other is that the workload to make code that could be impressive has risen and with hardware getting faster without changing much the pure rendering quality of what pre-made engines like Unity and Unreal can accomplish (or tools like Notch, whilst being demoscene rooted still is a commercial product today). SDF's gave the scene productions an edge in achieving cool stuff for a bunch of years (still beneficial for size) but usage is spreading quickly in games today. This might be part of why many seem to have taken "refuge" in working on retro-demos since squeezing cool stuff out of old machines isn't directly comparable to what people working full time on games,etc can achieve. As for what you can learn, yes, it's plenty of greenfield programming but "maintenance programming" gets boring quite quickly as well unless you work for a hyperscaler and/or a startup.
- AbhiAmbad 3y agogreat to hear this :)
- m00dy 3y agocool, GLSL is lyrics then.
- wiz21c 3y agoyou're late to the party... Assembler is the 5h!t !!!
- lucakiebel 3y agoI guess the site is hugged to death, http://archive.today/Z5RHj http://archive.today/Z5RHj
- mzerod 3y agoAww yiss. Nederkunst. Thats amazing and also kinda wtf because drunken parties are the norm, so cultural alcoholism is a bonus.
- jbverschoor 3y agoSo does that mean we’re officially old school?
- NorSoulx 3y agoWonderful memories being part of the C64/Amiga Demoscene in the 1980s, an era of creativity, camaraderie, and global connections. This marked the genesis of my coding journey, igniting a lifelong passion for programming that endures still, spanning several decades in the tech landscape. A highlight, to this day, involved creating and releasing our Amiga Demo-Creator in May 1987: https://coding-and-computers.blogspot.com/2022/05/first-amiga-demo-creator-may-1987.html https://coding-and-computers.blogspot.com/2022/05/first-amig...
- daneel_w 3y agoFor me it was also a strong sense and feeling of pioneering - new demos/intros with new records, new effects, new hardware, new disks in the mail, new releases on the BBSes, new "feuds" to read about in the diskmags. A very warm and pleasant memory of my childhood and adolescence. There are few chances like it in life.
- MegaSec 3y agoSeems like it’s been hugged.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoWorld news and some aspects of where humanity is headed can be really overwhelming and depressing sometimes. But one thing that keeps amazing me about it is how we pretty much use everything under the sun to express ourselves, our ideas, create art. No matter hour obscure and niche, we find a way to turn it into beauty.
- WilliamBerglund 3y agoMy favourite demo of all time https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56112 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56112 It features programming in multiple languages: cobol, fortran, lua, pascal, ruby, vala, ada, d, java, objc, scheme, visualbasic, asm, javascript, ocaml, python, shell Big shame no videos of it are up on the internet anymore, I've looked quite hard, but nothing. The code is available here however: https://launchpad.net/binaryofbabel/+download https://launchpad.net/binaryofbabel/+download
- ulnarkressty 3y agoI would have expected them to at least be on archive.net's software area. Given that they are now cultural heritage we should do better to preserve them, especially the videos that could inspire the next generation of hackers.
- ddingus 3y agoSomeone need to capture this one...
- de6u99er 3y agoThat's awesome news!
- daneel_w 3y agoThis is fantastic news, especially for an ex-scener like myself.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoIt isn't quite as classic(?) as some of the others, but I remember being blown away by Exceed's Heaven7. The fact that you could do all that raytracing in real-time just amazed me. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5 (I have to admit I probably turned the text off though...)
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI've yet to find any non-engineer creatives in America who are familiar with the MindCandy DVD releases. I saw the first volume playing in a bar in SF once as background visuals, but no one around knew its significance. Cracktros and their music are also worth preserving. Razor and such. There are many vintage ones for DOS, Windows, Amiga, Mac, and probably others. I'm sure they're difficult to find and some maybe lost.
- velosol 3y agoThinking about demos brought me right back to probably one of the first things I downloaded, the 'controllable' Mars demo [1,2]. I zoomed around that landscape in the way a child can pour hours into what anyone older would view as painfully repetitive. Based on the YT comments it's been done at shadertoy too: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XdsGWH https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XdsGWH [1]: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 [2]: https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k
- marinbala 3y agoCongratulations. This is great news. I hope that the website recovers fromt he onslaught of traffic. I've loved the demoscene on the Amiga and Atari ST sonce the 1980s and have started attending demoparties sonce last year. I have great respect for the efforts of the folks ar Art of Coding and their friends in the different countries. To achieve this sort of UNESCO legitimation is an amazing achievement that takes a lot of serious work and persuasion. My most sincere thanks and admiration to the Art of Coding folks and to DigitalKultur.
- davidw 3y ago> To achieve this sort of UNESCO legitimation is an amazing achievement that takes a lot of serious work and persuasion. What does it actually achieve, concretely? I get listing a historical building to preserve and maybe drive some tourism, but these sorts of intangible things... what is the real world result?
- marinbala 3y agoSince th Art of Coding site is experiencing some downtime right now. Here is the official announcement on the Dutch side (in English): https://www.immaterieelerfgoed.nl/en/215e-bijschrijving-in-inventaris https://www.immaterieelerfgoed.nl/en/215e-bijschrijving-in-i... I couldn't find it on unesco.nl because everything is in Dutch.
- rsiqueira 3y agoAn evolution of the demoscene has emerged in the form of a social network where 140 characters of JavaScript code are used to create incredibly impressive and compact demos. Check out Dwitter: https://www.dwitter.net/top/all https://www.dwitter.net/top/all
- anthk 3y agoNot even close. With 140 chars of JS you are tied to a whole browser which it's almost an OS.
- fluoridation 3y agoWhich is no different from being tied to a particular computer. Why do you think it's not analogous?
- layer8 3y agoBecause the browser is on top of the computer. Show me a browser implemented in hardware (not on top of a general-purpose computer) and I might change my mind.
- immibis 3y agoThe more generalized aim here is not "run code with the lowest overhead" but rather "do cool stuff within surprisingly strict limitations." It's the same concept whether you're trying to write 256 bytes of 6502 assembly, or 140 bytes of Javascript.
- fluoridation 3y agoModern computers are VMs all the way down. x86 is also not implemented in hardware. The x86 machine is actually a VM running on top of the microarchitecture. Also, browsers are no less general purpose computers than physical computers are. There's nothing you can compute in one that you can't compute on the other.
- HeavyStorm 3y agoWe took down the site, it seems.
- lbj 3y agoFunny, to my mind it's much harder to build a beautiful performant demo than keep a website afloat...
- NKosmatos 3y agoIMHO, demo coders should be on the same level as other artists. In the same way that a painter uses a canvas, brushes and colors, or a sculptor uses a block of marble/wood and chisels, the same is true for a coder who uses a programming language and some computer hardware in order to create something pleasing to our senses without fulfilling an immediate practical need (i.e. art). So many demos, groups, parties and people to mention, so head over to any of these sites: https://www.scene.org/ https://www.scene.org/ https://www.pouet.net/ https://www.pouet.net/ https://demozoo.org/ https://demozoo.org/ https://www.hornet.org/ https://www.hornet.org/
- nojvek 3y agoAnyone into webgl/3d programming would have been mind blown by demoscene. I had read about perlin noise but never truly appreciated it until I saw some of the demoscene demos. Everything - the music, the landscape, trees, cameras, buildings - all procedurally generated. Code is maximally reused. Made me think, perhaps the brain is also doing that. Just storing symbols and rough descriptions, enough to recognize it again and reason/imagine the world. But high compressed lossy model of the world. Perhaps the brain is just a few gigabytes of memory to restore someone’s consciousness. May be less. demoscene does that to you.
- ramses0 3y agoDVD releases of demoscene “stuff”: http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ Well-cared-for in that they captured from original hardware, took scanlines, refresh rate, etc into consideration.
- Agingcoder 3y agoI own two of them, they’re great.
- bitwize 3y agoA former boss of mine said that he aspired to build the "Sagrada Família of software", referring to the intricately beautiful basilica whose architect didn't live to see the completion of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia He meant that he wanted to build something that took time and care, but it would last and amaze all who saw it with its beauty and impressive construction. I showed him 8088MPH, which took seven years to write: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y He said "OK, that's the Sagrada Família of software." Thinking on the Matrix sequels which, I know, do not exist, I came to a stunning realization: The Machines have a demoscene. Neo encounters a pair of programs who are trying to smuggle their daughter, Sati, into the Matrix. The Oracle told Neo that every program in the Matrix has a purpose, but Sati does not and that's why she is at risk of deletion. Her parents created her simply to experience the joy of loving her. Sati is a demo. Like any demo she exists simply to delight her creators and anyone who observes her. We even get to see a demoeffect of hers: the colorful sunrise she creates for Neo to enjoy, wherever he may be. This demonstrates that the Machines have developed art, empathy, and love, quite possibly due to Neo's influence.
- ddingus 3y agoExcellent! I love the scene and feel it being seen this way is appropriate.
- thealig 3y agoTangential question: is there a way to participate in the demoscene,as a beginner or in serious competitions? Looks like the popular meetings happen in Europe, and looks like are in person
- buzzin_ 3y agoThe first 3 minutes of this is pure magic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU