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The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden
- nubb 2y agoive always thought the ethereum ecosystem would give demoscene a revival. storing the demos on chain adds a new layer of complexity where the bigger the size the more expensive to deploy.
- throwaway4736 2y agoAh, Sweden. Gave us “Enigma” by Phenomena and all of the music of Radix, Lizard King, Firefox, Mantronix, and Jogeir. As good as it gets!
- bane 2y agoAs a scener since the early 90s, I'm thrilled with these announcements. Personally, what I'd like to see come of it is an increase in the amount of academic studies of the scene at the intersection of art, technology, and anthropology. A careful study of the scene, what makes it unique, how it bleeds into other adjacent scenes (and what those are), sub-scenes, core elements of demoscene art and tech, all those things would be really interesting. They've all been written about by sceners in the past, but I think more outside observations would be enlightening. As a demoscener, you know what is scene and what isn't, and basically how it works. But I've found it nearly impossible to succinctly explain it to non-sceners without sounding like I'm crazy, or making it up, or giving them a very wrong understanding of core demo elements (e.g. "so it's all about doing things in small sizes?") One leg up, the scene has done a very good job archiving information about scene groups, sceners, scene productions, and sub-scene productions, giving future researchers a lot of information to start from.
- xandrius 2y agoI honestly often hear about the "demo scene" being talked about but I've never even once seen anything in the real world. I might see a youtube video or two but I would have 0 clue on: 1) What is it for? 2) Where does it happen? 3) What's the goal? (not in a snarky way but in what do the sceners pursue?) 4) How does one get to know about the demo scene? How does one "join"? I'm impressed by how something that seem so hidden, but also talked about, but also hard to catch still exists. I guess I'm just a noob out of the loop but I'm curious :) EDIT: Or maybe I am so out of the loop not to know it's mainly a thing of the past?
- renaudg 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://www.demoscene.info/ https://www.demoscene.info/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU
- idispatch 2y agoClassic masterpiece, for those who experienced it in 1990s and wanted to know how it was done: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality
- herbcso 2y agoI remember being blown away by Second Reality! Thanks for the trip down memory lane! ;]
- huseyinkilic 2y agoWe don't need no validation.
- karteum 2y agoIt's 12 years old now, but I am still extremely impressed by this 64k intro https://geidav.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/making-of-turtles-all-the-way-down https://geidav.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/making-of-turtles-al... and also by this 4k intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE :) And overall this website is extremely interesting with tutorials and code and great explanations https://iquilezles.org/ https://iquilezles.org/
- code_kate08 2y ago[dead]
- velo_aprx 2y agoHere is the official announcement (in Swedish): https://levandekulturarv.se/forteckningen/element/demoscenen https://levandekulturarv.se/forteckningen/element/demoscenen
- diggan 2y agoHastily thrown together translation, because I thought it captured the hacker mindset so well: > A fundamental driver of the demo scene is to make a machine, such as a computer, do something it has not done before. This could mean, for example, creating a tailor-made program for a particular type of machine. Technically, it is about exploiting the capabilities of the machine in an efficient and novel way. It's sad to think that the computing devices our newer generations are growing up with are trying their best to shoot down this exact use case; making the device do things no one made it do before. Instead, everything is locked down in the name of safety, and people loosing out on the ability of just having fun by modifying devices we already own.
- femto 2y ago> Instead, everything is locked down... There's an argument that that just raises the bar.
- Lerc 2y agoI think the term "Use case" has done a fair bit of the shooting itself. So many times I have seen people hold things up with "What's the use case" always transforming the problem at hand into convincing a person who doesn't comprehend that other people's experiences are also valid.
- _the_inflator 2y agoI think the demoscene is what it is: a treasure, a heritage. I was/still a part of it, but essentially, every demo evolved into a video during the 90th. A shift came with the more powerful machines, especially on PC. C64, Amiga 500 - technical prowess was necessary for certain optical illusions; the video illusion stems from hacks. This reversed. I think that this is ok. Device hacking is now the new old low-code hacking. Today's demoscene is also totally meta. From fighting emulators to accepting to utilizing was quite a ride. The massively impressive demos of today on C64 or Amiga are a testament to the heritage they capitalize on. Here and there, a minor tweak or final secret was finally totally understood; differences between serial numbers of C64 were a thing, too - and that's it. I am impressed by what has been done and achieved in the early days by machine code on C64 during the 80th. Massive influence was also time. The Scandinavians find a cool thing to do during the winter months and hack for days and nights - hardly anyone would do this today. There was no harddisk, code revisioning. Compiling took time, and saving the stuff on disk was a tedious procedure during debugging. Printed Assembler code etc. Today, you can dump the most elaborate code and data on emulators within seconds, all well compiled and checked - it is a wonder. IDEs, etc., are standard. Even back then, some elite coders used cross-development platforms, such as Amiga and C64, to deal with the burden of memory and slow compile times on C64. But the thing is that you had to develop the tools yourself. An advantage of this scale was earned. Anyway, it was a fantastic time. Copy parties, puberty, trash talk - and, to be honest, a lot of doxxing and mobbing in retrospect. I am glad I was part of the scene from 1987 to 1994 and attended Venlo and other infamous Copy parties. Greetings from Beastie Boys/C64
- skrebbel 2y agoAs a demoscener, I think this cool (though maybe also a bit useless). But the thing this highlights to me now is how weird it is that UNESCO heritage lists are per country. The design seems wholly unsuited to any sort of culture that has emerged after the invention of global communication networks such as the internet. IIRC demoscene is already recognized as UNESCO heritage in Finland and Germany, what are we going to do, go down the list of every country that ever produced more than a few demos? I mean of course none of this matters, because there's not really any tangible benefit to one's hobby being on a list like this, but it's still kinda funky. As if culture stops at country borders.
- w_TF 2y agoalso not very punk rock to crave validation from unesco
- makeitdouble 2y agoWould it help if you tried to have a demo class at a community center and could point at the UNESCO decision to get proper handling and shut down the "kids these days" arguments ?
- DoingIsLearning 2y agoThe biggest benefit is in bringing legitimacy to preservation efforts and curation of historic records (photos, videos, data, binaries, sources) on the history of the Demoscene. There is a large chunk of software history prior to pre-cloud services that has died in someone's hard drive, floppy, CD. Maybe because it was tied to IP or maybe just because they didn't think much about its historic value or didn't see it as ground breaking or note worthy.
- skrebbel 2y ago> There is a large chunk of software history prior to pre-cloud services that has died in someone's hard drive, floppy, CD. Sure but I don't see how being on a UN list helps fix that. Seems to me like efforts from people behind eg scene.org, archive.org (hat tip to jscott) etc are substantially more valuable to preservation efforts than convincing some folk dance geeks who work at the UN that rotating nipple balls are also cool (which of course they are) EDIT: To be clear, I don't mean to dismiss the effort. The entire point of the demoscene is "because we can!", so obviously this also holds for getting our hobby listed by the UN.
- kilpikaarna 2y ago> Idag används ofta särskilda programvaror för att skapa demos, men det är inget måste, man kan använda vilket program som helst. Wat?
- INTPenis 2y ago"Today there are specialized software to create demos but you can do it without these." It's a bit poorly formulated because back in the day people had nothing but a text editor.
- kilpikaarna 2y agoThere's been specialized tools in use since the very beginning though. I'd count assemblers and such among them. :)
- Doctor_Fegg 2y ago1987: https://cpcrulez.fr/applications_graphic-NWC-demomaker.htm https://cpcrulez.fr/applications_graphic-NWC-demomaker.htm
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bux93 2y agoI was going to mention Scream Tracker, but the Swedish language link names Fasttracker (apparently Swedish made, while Scream Tracker is by the Future Crew who hail from Finland).
- jansan 2y agoWelcome to the club! The demoscene is already UNESCO heritage in Finland, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.
- sandos 2y agoI was going to mention Finland, which I always thought was maybe slightly better even than my own Swedish demoscene! :)
- lores 2y agoBut not in Syria? Everyone always forgets the Damascene demoscene.
- tobylane 2y agoThey haven't yet had their sudden change of heart on the subject.
- myth_drannon 2y agoIt's haram now.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoSome of the other national UNESCO demoscene additions incl. thoughts around the benefits of this kind of declaration, and of course plenty of fond anecdotes: Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22876961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22876961 Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522681 Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36597460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36597460
- nwaf 2y ago[flagged]
- Kolorabi 2y agoAbsolutely deserved. Never been a part of the demoscene per se, but I remember going to The Party in Denmark the year that Andromeda won the Amiga compo with Nexus 7. That is one of the great memories from my youth.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoFastTracker was Swedish? That's enough to justify this list add IMO
- kookamamie 2y agoYes, FT was Swedish and Scream Tracker was Finnish, from Future Crew.
- tobr 2y agoFun to see goto80 at the top of HN. If there’s one song that got me hooked on the 8 bit sound as a teen, it’s Blox. https://archive.org/details/bliptv-20131104-213301-BleepStreet-Goto80Blox604 https://archive.org/details/bliptv-20131104-213301-BleepStre...
- villeb2 2y agoHe is a childhood buddy of mine and I had the same reaction to seeing him here.
- barcoder 2y agoIt’s incredible to see what can be achieved with very few lines of code to produce visuals and sound. It’s often pretty easy to know who the demoscene is made by because of the artistic style. Similar to more traditional art forms.
- chaosprint 2y agoReally interesting to read about this! That's wonderful validation for a vital digital culture and its heritage. As the creator of Glicol (https://glicol.org/ https://glicol.org/), based in Oslo and working in the digital arts space, I'm always fascinated by how different countries foster creative technology. Sweden's approach in recognizing the demoscene this way is particularly encouraging. It makes me reflect on the pathways to support here in Norway. While academic environments can be very supportive (as my previous supervisors have been), navigating the broader public arts funding structures for newer digital art forms sometimes feels more challenging, especially perhaps for those working outside of long-established networks. Seeing Sweden's success in formally recognizing this kind of digital heritage is genuinely inspiring and offers food for thought.
- emseetech 2y agoI use to mess around with Scream Tracker (and later Impulse Tracker) back in the day, so this is bringing back memories while showcasing a completely new approach. Incredibly cool project.
- larodi 2y agoWould you agree the demoscene is slowly turning into generative-art-NFT-scene. I mean, lot of new effects get released a gif or genart snippets, and some are actually really good. Also #genaury been a think for several years now. Not sure how this relates to the heritage status of older productions though.
- dakom 2y agoThere's also some cool stuff brewing in the AVS space to allow nondeterminism, GPU, storage, and more.. for example, WAVS executes stuff off-chain in WASI components, and brings the result on-chain (secured by re-staking via Eigenlayer etc.)- so there's a roadmap to do things directly in wasi-gfx powered shaders and more low-level access like that
- trollbridge 2y agoDon’t see how NFTs are relevant. ML/LLM/AI/generative transformer generated art is at home in the demo scene. The demoscene has always embraced new ways to create art, and then find a way to pack it inside a 32kB cracktro or BBS insert in a zip file. I wonder what could be done wi the Fabrice Bellard’s very low bitrate audio compression, for example… Some of the imagination is “What could have been?” What demos could have existed in 1981 on contemporary hardware? It is a pathway into imagining other worlds.
- larodi 2y agoFabrice Belliard, among other things, implements neural networks for fun and compression. I don’t think though he ever struggled to fit 32k or to do art, so dunno how this relates.
- trollbridge 2y agoWell, demos tend to also be about fun and compression.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- initramfs 2y agomy mom's basement is not for sale!
- BurningFrog 2y agoThe more things UNESCO declares an exceptional heritage, the less special they are. To me the shark is already jumped, but I don't think they'll ever quit.
- velo_aprx 2y agoYou kind of miss what the UNESCO Intangible Heritage list is actually about. It’s not like they’re handing out gold stars to things they think are "the best" or most "exceptional. The whole point is to recognize and help preserve living traditions.
- jolmg 2y agoI thought UNESCO world heritage sites were physical locations rather than aspects of a possibly physically dispersed culture. Is the site the whole country of Sweden?
- echoangle 2y agoIt's probably not a heritage site but something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Heritage_Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Her...