What a demoparty? What is the demoscene?

ARF?
Special notice to all the readers:
We do not want to be a videogame.
We don't want to be an art movie either.
We are just kickin it DEMOSTYLE.
-- from Re-recycle by Fairlight

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that sprung up in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, mostly in Europe, as crackers found ways to unlockVIC-20, Commodore, and Amiga, games for copying and added on opening sequences to advertise their (or their team's) accomplishment. Eventuallythe cracking aspect faded away and the focus shifted to the "intros", or later, "demos", which programmers used to push the limitsof their machines. (There was and is a small Apple / Macintosh demoscene, but because of the platform's rarity in Europe, its cost and that of its developer kits for people who wanted to see the guts of the operating system, it was never as popular.) Early demoscene effects include chrome reflections, raster bars, 3-D beforethe advent of graphics cards (especially either cubes or homages to the famous Utah teapot), plasmas (rippling effects), tunnels, and toruses (doughnut shapes).

In these days of smooth looking demos which sometimes have a sort of plotline, one must bear in mindthe most important difference between say, a Pixar movie, and a demo: demos are rendered in realtime (or, as many demos put it, with "NO PRECALC!!") by the processor of the computer they are running on. Although sceners have been known to do films (there's a film competition at Assembly, one of the oldest demoparties for example) and design has come increasingly to the forefront as computershave become more powerful and coding demo effects has become less challenging, demos are not films. There are usuallytechnical as well as artistic goals involved when a group or an individual scener sits down to make a demo (particularly the smallerones where you have to cram as much as possible into a small space, like say, 4K), andthis is an important distinction to remember. Although modern Windows demos are executable files or ".exe"s that the user launches in the same way one would launch a program, althoughsome of them make the sorts of demands on the processor and graphics cards that high-end games do, and in fact a sizeable number of participants in the demoscene, or "sceners" have ended up working in the computer games industry, a demoisn't interactive and so isn't a game, either.

With ham radio enthusiasts and animators, the demoscene's artistic and technical antecedents can be traced back as far as the 1930s if not further.Although their work may not have directly exerted an influence on the demoscene from the beginning, the work of animators like Oskar Fischinger,Mary Ellen Bute, and John Whitney laid the foundation for the aesthetic sensibility expressed in many demos. Animation is a very technological art, and many of the best animators are also well known for their technical innovations. Other antecedents of the demoscene include display hacks like those coders executed on platforms such as the PDP-11 (e.g. "munching squares") and telegraphy art(similar to ASCII art). The spirit of the demoscene is older than the microcomputer (or PC, i.e. personal computer as opposed to huge honking mainframe), for before there were BBSes there were ham radio enthusiasts. We may be a bunch of punks (not as young as we used to be :P ) but we know and respect our ancestors.


What is a demoparty?

Party place

Imagine a weekend-long party where you make stuff, watch nifty demos, hang out with your friends, maybe meet some of your heroes and hear some kickass music. That's a demo party. A bunch of artists, musicians, coders, and just plain goggle-eyed spectators sitting in a room with their computers (sometimes escaping outside)being silly, and getting to know each other. Don't worry, you're allowed to sleep. This isn't a 48-hour LARP. No one will assassinate you. It is important to get enough rest and calories or you won't enjoy the party, and the rest of us will be very thankful if you shower at least twice during the event. See the *Where and When* page for more details.

Because a lot of sceners are also computer gamers, some large demoparties now include gaming tournaments in their schedule, and some have become mostly nothing more than a huge LAN party, which is fine if you're into that sort of thing. We're focused on demos. If you want to break out your copy of Doom 2 \m/ or Mangband and play with your friends, you are welcome to, but when we show the compos, you'll need to kill all sound and lights! And while you're at it, you little punk, get off my lawn. ( :


Demoscene jargon


Linkfarm

Descriptions of the demoscene


Video captures of some demos or "prods" (productions)


Assembly at Hartwall Arena

Demoscene resource sites


Related material