DEMOSCENE: the art of real-time [1 ed.] 952917022X

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DEMOSCENE: the art of real-time

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PUBLISHED BY EVEN LAKE STUDIOS AND KATASTRO.FI Editor: Lassi Tasajärvi

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Texts: Mikael Schustin, Bent Stamnes, Lassi Tasajärvi

Supported by the following:

Art Direction & Design: Markus Grannenfelt [murk@whitesheep.fi] Translations: Arttu Tolonen

Paper: Chromocard 300 g G-print 150g Printed by: Salpausselän kirjapaino. 1st Edition: 1000 Contact: www.evenlakestudios.com www.katastro.fi

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© copyright Even Lake Studios 2004 Cooperation: Atelier Nord, NIFCA, Mikael Schustin

ISBN 952-91-7022-X

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Contents________________ appertizer_a brief history of the demoscene_starters_let it beep (case: tracker music)_continued w/_little sound dj (lsdj) interview _main course_computer parties(case: the gatherng)_

contnd.__________________ in between_demoscene. katastro.fi exhibition_dessert_the demoscene eras_night cap_the a-z greetings + picture creditos___________________ _________________________ ________________________enjoy!_

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The demoscene is one of the most interesting phenomena to come out of digital media culture. Its roots stretch back to the late-70s and early-80s, but it managed to remain obscure until the beginning of the 21st century. It’s rare that an active, organized and global phenomenon would want to remain underground for 20 years, while still exercising considerable influence outside itself. The demoscene developed rapidly in the 1980s, especially in Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe, but it also had pockets in the USA and other parts of the world. Basically, it took root wherever significant amounts of home computers were sold. It’s a culture created by the first generation of kids who grew up with home computers and computer games. Even before Internet use became widespread, thousands of audiovisual works had been globally published and distributed by the demoscene culture. This was done using modems and diskettes by different global groups. At the same time, the cracking scene, which has always been a close relative of the demoscene, systematically cracked and distributed just about every computer game and program to come on the market. There is something significant about this culture by virtue of the numbers alone. The presence was soon felt in other areas of culture.

FOREWORD Lassi Tasajärvi 2004-02-15

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9 / 10 The demoscene spawned a group of people that have worked in or started companies that played an important and pioneering role in the game, new media, digital graphics and ICT-sector industries in many countries. The demoscene was where many digital media artists, electronic music composers, as well as visual club culture and virtual community activists got their start. Many of them still know each other by the aliases they used, their groups and exploits, all things that outsiders have no clue about and couldn’t hope to penetrate. In the 2000s, the demoscene is still an active and productive global network and culture that has recently started to draw the attention of researchers, curators, the media and corporations. Small-scale gettogethers have grown into events that attract thousands of young people for weekends of playing, communicating and digital culture production. The first attempts at exhibiting and documenting the output of this culture are finally underway, thanks mostly to the first generation of demoscenesters. This book is the first of its kind dealing with the demoscene. It’s not meant to be an authoritative history or a comprehensive study. It’s just an introduction to a phenomenon, whose birth, background and consequences deserve to be widely known and discussed. Hundreds or thousands of pages would have been necessary to do justice to the contributions, con-

nections and diversity of all the works, artists, groups and countries. The official history will come later, as will the in-depth analysis from an art historical and sociological standpoint. What’s needed now is an open door to a previously secret chamber and this book aspires to be a key that demoscene members, researchers, curators and journalists can use to carry on the work started here. This book is divided into two parts. It contains a longer article on the history of the scene and a series of articles dealing with individual cases, written by a variety of writers. Together they provide the general public with a first-time glimpse of the phenomenon as a whole. I took a conscious risk in splitting the demoscene history into three parts in a separate timeline, knowing it’ll generate comments and discussion. That’s a good thing, since this is not a ride to be taken alone.

Personal acknowledgements and a very typical scene story: Greetings to my parents who bought me my first Commodore 64 in 1985. Greetings to my childhood friend Devil, who soon after introduced me to the cracking scene. Biggest greetings ever to Mr.T (code) and Black Sky (gfx) who founded Twilight (Amiga/FI) with me in 1988. Greetings to all those fellow demoscenesters who I met in small town copy parties a long time ago and to those who returned my stamps and discs with a long letter for a time or two [hundred]. Greetings to the whole katastro.fi posse. Big respect to Bent, Mikael, Murk and Arttu and all the other artists who contributed the project. Major greetings and thanks to Marita Muukkonen for supporting us in the process. I’d also like to thank Jim ”Trixter” Leonard for his feedback.

W3lc0m3 t0 a w0rld built 0n c0d3. Hack in.

The financial support was granted by the Nordic Cultural Fund, the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (AVEK) and the Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME) . We salute you!

15.2.2004 Lassi Tasajärvi Rawer signin’ out...

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11 / 12 This gave birth to the first generation of artists that started expressing themselves digitally. Many went on to study traditional art and use different media for self-expression, but the important point is that they learned to use computers to create whatever they wanted, on their own terms, without any knowledge of earlier art theories or techniques.

kuva? vai väriboksi?

Cracked by The Kid Next Door

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEMOSCENE_ by Lassi Tasajärvi

Generation 0/1 The generation that lived through early adolescence in the 1980s was the first to grow up with home computers and computer games. The computers available for home use were fairly rudimentary, as far producing graphics or music went, but using them for creative endeavors soon started to interest the kids after the novelty of the rather basic games wore off. Traditionally, when a child starts to display a talent for art, he or she is steered towards piano lessons or drawing classes. The generation that grew up with home computers soon started to use the computers for both art

and music, at their own behest. For many the computer was just the closest tool available, but some kids chose the computer because they liked challenges and they were the ones that gave birth to a whole new culture. The first home computers on the markets were extremely basic and using them for just about anything required an intimate understanding of how the computer worked and how to program it. The kids with creative talent and a good enough grasp of mathematics and new technology were able to use these computers for self-expression in surprisingly diverse ways.

In the 1980s, computer advertisements sold the image of a machine that had something to offer each member of the family. This primitive little box was supposed to store mom’s recipes and dad the architect was going to use it to design buildings. These corny adverts painted a picture of a family arguing about whose turn it was to use the computer for the common good. What it came down to in real life was this: the arguments would deal with whether it was junior’s turn to play computer games using the family TV or the family’s turn to watch programs and how much money could be spent on new computer games per month. The Commodore 64, the most popular home computer of its time, came with a tape deck that could load and save games and programs, using regular audio cassettes. The most forward-thinking radio shows would even broadcast computer programs that listeners could record on their cassettes and load into the computers. Customer service deparments were clogged with calls from confused older listeners, when the request show was followed by ten minutes of infernal noise. Some thought that it was experimental music and the rest thought that their radios had broken down. Tape decks and the early versions of the disk

drive could easily be used to copy games. Game manufacturers had naturally equipped their wares with different copy protection methods. Some were technical, but others consisted of codes you had to feed in to gain access to games. The codes came with the games and were printed in a way that prevented copying, so the kid next door had to buy his own copy or borrow the original, along with the code card. It didn’t take long, however, before kids bored with playing started to experiment. Pages and pages of code that came with the computer or in magazines were used to learn about the art of programming and the structure of the computer. We’re talking about kids between the ages of 10 and 20. It didn’t take long for the most adept to figure out the secrets of the computer and start looking into how games were made. If you knew what you were doing, you could dig up the part of the program code that contained the copy protection. This made it easier to disable it. The altered program was saved, copied and distributed among friends. Parents were happy, since requests for money decreased noticeably. Game manufacturers were understandably upset by this development and started developing more elaborate and advanced copy protection technologies. This, in turn, motivated the kids to work harder at cracking them. This was the start of a race that is still being run.

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The original motive of these kids, crackers, was not money. It was about testing one’s skills and overcoming a challenge. What better way to do this than the secretive area of copy protection code? And every time you managed to crack one method, the opposition would soon present you with a new challenge. Another motivating factor was the chance to gain credibility with your peer group. The first one to crack a tough protection measure got respect from the other crackers. And among

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13 / 14 those who just played games, the fame of the cracker as a good source grew. Soon the crackers had friends with extensive game collections, who, in turn, started trading games with their friends. The ”distribution networks” for cracked games quickly grew from covering one group of friends to entire cities and soon countries, as well as across national boundaries. This meant that the best crackers would be known by hundreds and thousands of kids. It’s worth noting that money never changed hands in the original networks. The crackers were after fame and challenges.

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Early on the crackers started adding their own signature to the games they cracked, so their colleagues would be aware of who it was that got there before them and the players would know who made it all possible. They used aliases, partly because their real identities were secret but also because aliases were cool. The typical text before a cracked game would be something along the lines of ”Cracked by Black Hawk”.

Game firms and government officials reacted to the phenomenon but could do little to prevent its growth. One of the reasons may have been their inability to understand the nature of what was happening. They thought the crackers were doing it to sell the games and concentrated their raids on small companies that tried to make money out of cracking games. These companies rarely had any real connections with the cracker scene. The fame associated with the different cracker names and ”brands” grew and pretty soon many of them weren’t even playing the games they cracked, but concentrated on cracking the copy protection measures and getting the games out to the distribution network. Some concentrated on cracking only good games: ”What’s the point of cracking a bad

game? Who’s gonna play it?” In addition to the text, crackers were starting to add graphics and sound to their ”advertisements”. First, they used elements taken from the game that were programmed to do the crackers bidding on the screen. Soon, they were designing their own logos and developing styles that would repeat from one ”release” to the next.

Crack Intros

to fix, just so no one could accuse them of publishing a bad crack version. Crackers were not the only ones bored with playing. Many of the kids that owned hundreds of games were developing an interest in the graphics and music used in their games. There was so much more there than what art or music classes at school could offer. The esthetics of games was something they could identify with. In addition to playing games, their parents really had no clue what they were doing with the computer that seemed to take up so much time. The computer classes at school had nothing to offer an advanced cracker or artist, neither in the realm of technology or esthetics, since the equipment and software used by schools was light years behind the supercharged audiovisual nature of the games.

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The little programs or adverts attached to the games were soon named ”crack intros”. As the name implies, it was a piece of work displayed before the game. The typical elements included the cracker’s logo, an occasionally animated text extolling his skills and speed, as well as computer graphics that moved to the beat of the accompanying background music.

Some crack intros were later developed into ”trainers”. In addition to removing the copy protection and borrowing game elements for their intros, crackers started experimenting changing the game itself, by inserting shortcuts that made playing easier. In conjunction with the intro, you could, for example, choose to have immortality. This would allow you to quickly play the game through. The crackers and crack intros thus became conduits for the perfect (anti)game experience. This turned up rate of demand for new games in the distribution network, since it took a day to play through most of the new cracks with their augmented capabilities. Sometimes crackers fixed bugs that the game firms had neglected

In the beginning, the crackers made all the elements in their intros themselves or borrowed them from games, but soon they found friends who knew how to use tools for making music or graphics. Or they had programmed the tools themselves. These snippets of code and primitive programs were developed into highly specialized tools, which could be used by people who had no idea how to program a computer. They spread like wildfire among the interested and initiated, since they were often distributed on the same cassettes and disks as the cracked games. Soon, the team responsible for cracking a game included, in addition to the programmer who cracked the game, a kid specializing in graphics and another one that made music. In addition to their personal aliases, they employed team names, like ’Evil Cracking Association’ or something of that sort. The most active teams that made the best intros soon gained notoriety in the networks. There were people who started admiring the intros for their own sake. They might never even get

around to playing the game. The teams soon started competing against each other, not only in the areas of who’d crack a game first, but also by trying to make the coolest and most advanced crack intro possible. So, the artists’ and the musicians’ aliases were gaining fame as well. Share and Enjoy Often the team included people who were engaged in actively distributing the cracked games and intros. One person might have dozens or hundreds of contacts around the country and world that he could trade games with. Preferably ones cracked by his team or contacts. These guys were called swappers, traders or couriers. The stream of kids with the blank discs and cassettes would be heading to the swappers house. Some weren’t into copying games for people who weren’t ’in the scene’ – i.e. just played, didn’t crack or make intros. Instead, they’d use the mail to trade dozens of cassettes or disks per week with their colleagues. With the help of the programmers, or by themselves, the swappers would collect the best cracks and intros onto one disk, using their own name or the name of the team, and these compilations became a sort of calling card for them.

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As the competition between the different teams stiffened, notice was given to the beginning of the ”production process”. In the early days, games were cracked after it was bought or borrowed from a friend. In order to maximize speed and dispersion, more professional moves were needed. Going to the store on the day of the launch was not enough. People involved with the making of the games were recruited to provide a team with games before they were out for public release.

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These included importers and people who wrote reviews for magazines, or anyone that had access to games before their publication. Sometimes teams would call the manufacturer and pretend to be working for a foreign games magazine and request review copies. The next level of contacts were people working at the game firm. They were the ones that were forced to hide behind an alias, so if a team had previously used their real names and included their contact information, these new developments meant that everyone in the team had to be more careful and paranoid. The people that got the games for the team were called suppliers and they made it necessary for the game industry to start taking the phenomenon seriously. The crackers still weren’t making any money for their efforts. They were satisfied with the challenge and the fame, as were some of the suppliers. Some had to be bought. Previously, the games had made it to the stores and sold quite well before they were cracked. Now, with the increased efficiency of the cracker network game sales were down, since the game might come out on the cracker networks weeks or months before its actual publication date. Cracking became a sport based on speed. At its most intense, it was a question of hours. Back when snail mail was the primary method of distribution, this degree of precision was impossible, so victories were measured in days, but once the modem became a part of the cracker’s toolbox, it was down to hours. The fastest team was able to prove that their BBS had offered the crack for download hours before the other team. Quality was important, though. If you managed to mess up the game while cracking it, your fame faded fast; in addition, the most scorn was heaped on teams that re-cracked games already done by other teams.

The stiff competition forced programmers to make a priority choice. Would they concentrate on cracking or on getting the most out of their computers by making increasingly impressive crack intros? Over the years, crack intros had developed into a rather advanced entity in their own right. They had a solid fan base. Often intros outshone the games they preceded in terms of technical and esthetic brilliance. The cracking of games was also attracting more and more attention in the law enforcement community and some of the crackers didn’t really think going underground for this sort of infraction was worth it. This was especially true of the graphic artists and musicians involved in the making of the intros. They wanted more recognition for their skills, but so did many of the programmers who were employing ingenious methods to get the most out of their computers. Advertising the greatness of this team wasn’t the programmer’s only motivation for placing music and graphics in the intros. He also wanted to let his programming abilities shine conspicuously by having more color, more movement and more sound on screen than anyone else using the same computer. So, the programmers, along with the musicians and graphic artists, started to gain a fan base. Teams and individuals were dividing into groups that concentrated on cracking games and ones that concentrated on making impressive intros. Originally, a team might have two different units, where one would make intros and the other would concentrate on the illegal aspects of the trade. More and more people were, however, getting into it just for the intros, both individuals and teams. Eventually, the intros were no longer distributed with the games. They gained their own distribution networks. The intros were now called demos and a new age was born.

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Demos In this context a demo is not an expression of a political opinion or the musical output of a band trying to make it out of the basement. Or even the advance version of a computer program. It refers to a stand-alone work that combines programming chops with computer graphics and music. The name ”demo” comes from the word “demonstration”. The distribution network for demos was the same as the one for games. Demos were distributed on the same compilations as games and they started to interest the players, even though they had no idea what they were. The demos were skillfully made little works of art that relied on an esthetic sense familiar to all gamers. They inspired an ever-growing number of kids to check out the tools that came with the demo and game compilations or learn programming. It’s important to understand how demos differ from videos or 3D-animations. In a demo, the objects and effects you see on the screen are created in real-time, calculated and generated by the computer as you watch. They aren’t played off a diskette, tape or a hard disk. The memories of the first home computers were laughably small. It wasn’t large enough to hold any preprogrammed or generated animations. Each second of an animation requires many frames, each of which requires a considerable amount of memory, especially if you wanted it to look smooth and contain many colors and cover the whole screen. Besides, the same memory has to also have room for the code and the music. For this reason, anything with any degree of complexity to it had to be realized via code and in real-time. Movement and effects were mathematical algorithms that the computer used to calculate what kind of element was drawn on screen, how the element was

moved and shaped. In demos, everything you see on screen is drawn several times per second, so that the movement looks as smooth and impressive as possible. The real-time principle and technology behind demos are similar to those behind games. For the player to feel that he or she is really controlling what happens in a game, things have to happen in real-time. When you yank on the joystick, the game has to react immediately. You can’t play an animation. It makes its way from beginning to end, exactly the way it was filmed or animated. The difference between games and demos is that, while in a game the player has an impact on what happens on the screen, in a demo the user is just a viewer. In a demo, all the computerís resources are used to generate, calculate and present this complex whole in real-time. Interaction would just consume vast amounts of precious resources that are best used for expanding the boundaries of what a particular computer is capable of. The makers of demos also wanted to create

a work that they control, where they express themselves, not the viewer or the user. We are talking about a kind of ’interpassive’ work, which could, as far as the technology goes, contain interactive elements, but the choice not to include them has been made. The concept of demos as a ’real-time work of art’ can be clarified through the use of a more traditional comparison. When comparing the movies to theater, theater is often referred to as an interactive and direct form of art. Theater performances are live, while movies are pre-recorded. Demos are much more like theater performances than movies, videos or animations. An animation played on a computer is a movie-like, linear work that is the same every time you play it. The contents of a movie or an animation are defined when they are filmed, and the projector or computer that is used for screening the work doesn’t have to expend its resources in generating it. It merely repeats it. A theater performance (and a demo) is born in front of the viewer’s eyes. Naturally, the

plot and choreography (code) is defined in advance by the writer and director (and demo programmer), and these are used to control the actors, lights and special effects (and graphic elements on screen). It also contains music. In a theater, an orchestra can be used to simultaneously play the music as the play is being performed. It’s the same with demos. Someone composed the music and the computer plays the score (code), live, by generating the sounds using its sound chip or card. The strength of a theatrical performance is its actors, who always (theoretically) perform the play the same way, based on instructions given by the director. The computer’s processor repeats the work the same way each time, based on the instructions given by the programmed code, since there is no user interaction. The theater director and the demo programmer are faced with some of the same limitations. The director can’t get the actors to move faster than they are physically capable of or to add more elements than they can control to their movements. A good director

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19 / 20 or coach armed with a thorough knowledge of his or her actors and coaching methods can get the most out of the actors and produce an impressive and physically effective work. In the same way, a programmer who knows his computer and the code he uses can move elements on his stage in a more impressive manner than others. It’s important to acknowledge the difference between both forms of art and the passive movie, animation or video that lack the ”it’s all happening here and now” aura. The viewer should gasp at what can be done with very meager resources (processor speed and amount of memory). For this reason demos have always been very much a programmer’s art. The graphic designers and musicians are respected for how well they perform in a limited environment, but it’s clear that the highest degree of creative problem solving is needed in programming in order to coax real-time media art out of primitive equipment.

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The viewer has to have an understanding of the real-time nature of the works, otherwise the viewer may demand the same things from a demo that they do from a video or animation. This is a part of the reason why demos have, for a long time, been the art of a certain generation of young people, since art critics and curators lack the understanding of how computers and code work, not to mention game esthetics, necessary to truly appreciate demos. The demo scene

In the 1980s programmers and other kids who spent time working on their computers were usually shy and silent. Their peers thought they were odd and the time spent with computers caused either worry or amusement in the people around them. That has all changed.

Using computers and networks is seen as a right (and sometimes responsibility) inherent to every citizen. ”Former” nerds like Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds are the heroes and success stories of our time. Making demos offered kids who may have been quiet, liked math and computers and were perhaps looked down upon by others a chance to shine. No one cared how many pimples the guy behind the Black Hawk moniker had on his face. The only thing that mattered was what he could do. There were thousands of people around the world who felt how he felt and had been through the same stuff. The scene encouraged countless programmers, musicians and graphic artists to develop their skills, regardless of what the people in their immediate vicinity thought about them. The people criticizing the kids for their antisocial pastimes had no understanding of the elaborate social networks connected to the demo scene. And the networks were global. This was all before the widespread use of the Internet. As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, the Commodore 64 had been almost totally replaced by Commodore’s Amiga 500 computer as the preferred demo platform. The Amiga was challenged by the Atari ST, which had its own fans. The PC, which was primarily a computer for business, didn’t really come into its own until the middle of the decade. Now, demos have been made for a number of different platforms, but it was during the reign of the Amiga 500 that the demo scene phenomenon developed into what it is today, in terms of how the different individuals and teams interact and how many people are involved, worldwide. The span of time between 1980 and the early-90s is usually referred to as the golden years or oldskool. During the late 80s, demo teams were sprouting up in great numbers all over the world, es-

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21 / 22 pecially in countries where home computers were popular. The groups soon became aware of each other and started trading demos. The most common way of distributing demos was on pack disks, which contained the team’s swapper’s contact information. This trade soon went global and became a solid network of people, now known as the ”demo scene”. Daily, hundreds of demo diskettes would be making their way from point A to point B, courtesy of global snail mail. It was a new way to utilize the very old concept of pen pals. The emphasis was on trading one’s own creative endeavors. The trading of new games became its own subculture after the demo-trading scene took off. A group’s swapper, also known as a ’mail trader’, could have hundreds of contacts all over the world and spend a considerable percentage of his allowance on postage stamps and empty diskettes. Some of the swappers became friends and, along with diskettes, the packages would convey the latest personal news. The most hardcore swappers invested significant amounts of money in keeping the network active. The most important and active had direct contacts in all the significant cracking and demo groups, which guaranteed them access to all the newest wares (cracked games and tools) and demos. In addition to game distributors, demo swappers started competing to see who could get access to the ’0 dayz old’ demos. In the beginning, their own demos were an important unit of currency. A swapper who was just starting out would only have access to old games and demos, ones that had already been through several hands. There was no way you could get in touch with the elite swappers with that stuff. The only thing to do was make your own demos and compilations. Then you could be sure no one else had what you had. Making your own demos was the

best way to get contacts instead a bunch of ’no thanks’ letters. The hardcore elite swappers could request that people send them two diskettes: one they’d get back, the other would be payment to the swapper. In this way, some of the more active swappers could cover some of their costs. Another popular method was recycling stamps. All you had to do was spray a thin layer of hairspray, wax or water-soluble glue on the stamps before sending, so the post office stamp could be washed off. Swappers asked each other to return the stamps with the next package. This was especially common in overseas trades. For the most part, the global post system was oblivious to the extent of the network. In most cases, if the stamp recyclers were caught, they could get away with it by saying they were devoted stamp collectors and just wanted the stamps back for their collection. In a worst-case scenario, it involved a visit from the police and a lecture to both the kids and their parents. Since the other party involved was usually in another country, not much was done to uncover the true extent of what was going on. The fact that the perpetrators were underage also contributed to the post offices’ laissez-faire attitude. In any case, instead of getting hung up on the stamps, the cops would have been better off looking at what was inside the package, since odds are most of it was illegal. Your average policeman in the early 1990s was not informed about software piracy or the laws established to combat it. The demo scene was a cultural phenomenon born as a result of new digital technology and the art produced using it, and the global interaction this activity resulted in among the artists. The demo scene also produced ”zines”, known as ”diskmags” or ”diskzines”, with articles and criticism dealing with the

demos and their makers. The zines had an editorial board, usually a demo group. Sometimes they would have writers from several countries, writing articles about different issues. The zines contained global news about new demos, the birth of new groups or the death of old ones, fusions, people changing groups, etc. There were demo and group Top Ten-charts. Swappers were rated, too, and the zines could be used to look for new contacts. Get-togethers were written about in very colorful party reports. Some publications concentrated on publishing lists of the most popular demos and groups; these lists were known as Charts. In the early days, diskettes were distributed via snail mail, but the new generation was quick to embrace the potential of the bulletin board systems, i.e. BBSs, in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. Since the works were

digital to begin with, they were ideally suited to be distributed in this manner. So the move was made from the post carrier’s leather bag to the data cable. Swappers who concentrated on distributing their wares this way were called modem traders. Every self-respecting cracking team had their own BBSes that could be accessed via a phone line. Each group typically had a World Headquarters (WHQ) and various country-specific HQs that were used to distribute wares and demos. The BBS was run by a sysop (system operator). The early modem connections were ridiculously slow compared with today, but files were also much smaller. Many families were mystified by junior hogging the phone line for hours at a time, but not talking to anyone. Often, the pipe to the HQ might be open from late at night until early in the morning. The pro swappers had 24/7 BBSes, with ac-

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old demos on the PC. The demo scene and its culture still unite tens of thousands of people around the world and the number of works they have produced can be counted in the hundreds of thousands. The demo scene phenomenon was strong in Europe, and especially the Nordic countries. It still is. The computers used for making demos made their biggest impact in Europe. PCs were, for a long time, too expensive and slow to compete with Commodore’s 64 and Amiga machines. cess restricted to a chosen few. If telephone hacking or phreaking, had been an idle pastime before, used mostly to gain access to free voice or conference calls, now it made monetary sense. If you could bill your 8 hours, long distance, on someone else, you’d save a lot of money. Naturally, the whole demo scene moved on to the Internet as soon as it was possible in the early 1990s. The Internet revolutionized both the cracking and demo scenes. The amount of traffic grew exponentially and anyone could distribute files in many different ways. Many old skool crackers and swappers feel that this is when the underground values and spirit of honorable competition disappeared. The crowd just got too big. This coincided with a series of raids that shut down many of the legendary BBSes. The rest were shut down due to lack of motivation. For demo makers and collectors, the Internet was a positive revolution, because most of the demos published here and there in the 1980s and 1990s, were available on the Internet. Individuals emptied the contents of their old hard disks and diskettes onto the data networks. Demo communities and teams beat most of the corporations in establishing their own homepages. A plethora of player and emulator programs made it possible to view

Finland has always been one of the world’s leading demo countries. The repercussions of this fact can still be felt in the local IT-industry. Basically, demo scenesters started all the Finnish game companies. Many new media companies and advertising agencies are full of them. The demo scene was like a school, since no education to become a digital media expert was available in the 1980s and early1990s. Demos as art In the early days of demos and home computers, no one had coined the term multimedia. Demos were clearly an early form of multimedia art, though. The makers of demos have always steered clear of the term. Generally, they’ve avoided any attempts to attach what they do to any existing artistic paradigm. For the people making the demos, the point is to stretch the capabilities of the computer and to look for new ways of presenting ever more complex works. The technological challenge, competing with your peers, plays a central role in developing their own form of expression. The demo is not only a work, but also a demonstration of the makers’ artistic and technical skills. The aim is to outdo others.

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25 / 26 magic tricks and true programming prowess, you can generate controversy while remaining credible. Sometimes groups will improve on their demos and release better versions later, especially if there is a particularly bad bug in the code. This practice was not as widespread in the pre-Internet days as it is now. Back then once you released a version, it was out of your hands and in the mail. Some crack teams would take buggy demos, fix them and re-release them, complete with sarcastic greetings directed at the original group.

In the same way crackers race to be the first to release a cracked game, demo groups compete to be the first to use a particular effect or routine (preferably something nobody has thought of before). Making a demo may take anywhere from a few days to as long as a year. Even though technical prowess is the point in competing with demos, various cheats and ’magic tricks’ are allowed. In many demos, a particular implementation is not as advanced as is claimed, or it is only partially implemented. This is allowed, as long as the cheat isn’t immediately apparent. The point of a demo is to make the viewer speechless. After a period of speechlessness, the question that comes to mind ought to be ”How IS that done?” By combining a suitable number of

No one knows who made the first demo or intro. The question has generated a lot of discussion, but most of it ends up being arguments about whether it was made for a Commodore 64 or should we count the text greetings or little adverts made for other platforms. Or even the short little programs made for the first generation of programmable calculators. It’s likely that as soon as the first computer that even vaguely resembled what we now consider a home computer came out of the box, someone was trying to make it do things completely outside of its normal boundaries. And the next logical step is to see who can make it do the coolest things. Generally, the first scene that fulfills the criteria given to that word these days, would have been the piracy scene that grew around the Apple II computer in the late-70s.

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27 / 28 tributed as they were, individually. When the classic intro - single part - megademo division was broken, a spate of subcategories was born in rapid succession. In addition to trackmos, there were e.g. dentros (half demo, half intro), multros (multi part intros) etc. As in the early days, musicians still collected their pieces onto special music-discs and graphic artists published slide shows of their work.

Categories and Styles Demos can be divided into several categories. This was especially the case in the early days. The general tradition of the early crack intros (also known as ’cracktros’) was continued by what are known as just intros, which were a kind of minidemo. The structure was simple and they were short. They were primarily used for communications, like advertising the group BBS, changes in the group’s membership or call-outs to other groups to attend a get-together (invitation intro). Most demos were single part demos. As you can tell by the name, these demos had one part. The contents consisted on variations on a series of themes and effects. In addition to the effects, the demo might contain dozens of minutes worth of scrolling text. Megademos were ambitious works,,

often spread over a couple of diskettes. They consisted of several parts, each of which might have different coders, graphic artists and musicians working on it. As a result, the styles of the different parts could vary quite dramatically. The beginning of the 1990s saw the emergence of the trackmo demo. The structure was no longer based on separate parts. Instead, the program would be loading the next part as the previous one played. The term “trackmo” comes from the fact that they were continuously loading and running “track by track”. The parts were mixed together, either audio visually or through a plotline. Trackmos demos loaded and worked without an operating system, so they used all the available space on a disk (or several) and couldn’t be copied onto compilations. They had to be dis-

In the first 1980s demos, the standard elements were the group’s logo, a scroller text, various small, animated graphic elements called ’sprites’ and ’bobs’, color bars called ’copper bars’ and ’equalizers’ that moved to the pulse of the music. Other popular elements that came along later included fractal graphics and different ’plasma’ effects, which were multicolored, animated color surfaces that filled most of the screen. As demos developed, the complexity, amount, colorfulness and mobility of the elements increased as a result of constant competition. Texts started to run in different directions on screen and various tricks to make 2D elements look or behave like 3D elements were employed. The basic nature of the demos started to change in the early-90s. It became more like design and the influence of traditional graphic design and art became more pronounced. More and more demos had a person involved who chose designer as their title. He was something between a director and a graphic artist. Earlier, it was the coder that took a holistic view of the project and realized it, with help from a graphic artist. Now, the designer had more input into the basic structure of the demo. At the same time, the real-time effects were being augmented with short bits of animation. This was usually the case with demos where human figures were seen dancing to mobility of the elements increased as a added in. Emulating effects like color and

noise filters further emphasized the music video esthetic. At the same time, a higher degree of synchronization and a deeper relationship between the music and the effects was sought. Since the music was real-time, having a certain effect show up using a trigger placed in the code for a specific instrument (or any part of the music code really) was logical. Certain groups concentrated on this side of their demos and became known for it.

3

The 1990s saw explosive development in the field of vector graphics. In the demo scene, this resulted in an almost weekly unveiling of ever more complex 3D objects and tricks. It all started with the simple wire frame vector objects of the 80s: cubes, pyramids, etc. These were then filled and textured. The objects and textures became more and more complex and started to react to their surroundings in different ways, like generating reflections. Basically, just about every effect offered by image processing or 3D modeling software was done individually and in real-time. It’s worth keeping in mind the fact that the computer has to calculate 50-70 images per second on screen in an average demo. A 3d program may spend 50-70 minutes, or even couple of days, rendering ONE image.

As the demos became more and more cinematic, one level of communication in the demo scene was lost. Since the first cracks, the demo screens had contained scroll texts that were used by groups to communicate with each other by exchanging greetings, news, contact information, pleasantries, as well as tell stories to hype themselves up and relate details of epic drunken parties. An integral part of the texts were also the credits (who made the intro or demo) and the greetings, where the group gave shout outs to all the other groups they traded with, respected or just wanted to be pals with.

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29 / 30 The primary aim of every group starting out was to get as many cool, established groups on their greetings list as possible. Even more important was getting your own name on the lists of these groups. The road to the greetings list for a novice group went through their swapper contacts. They were the ones that kept the greetings lists up-to-date. The scroll texts played an important part in how the whole culture developed. They were the birthing place for the legends of the early days. This was how information was disseminated before the diskette zines or Internet. The various track and design demos were built on a series of rapidly changing scenes, so a stream of text lasting for several minutes would have been incongruous. What were left was the credits, greetings, as well as the occasional message or inside joke that was briefly flashed on screen. Art Program[ming] Generally speaking, early demos combined traditional esthetic values, new technology, and popular culture. Parents or teachers very rarely had any idea what the kids were doing with their computers. From this point of view, making demos could be considered an autonomous phenomenon. What the people in the scene considered good or bad art had little to do with traditional techniques or theories. Demos were influenced by the esthetics of sci-fi, heavy metal record covers, MTV, advertisements, fantasy and pornography, or in other words, everything that fascinated the average 10-20 year old male. It’s also important to remember that there were no ready-made programs for producing music, graphics or multimedia available for the first generation of home computers. The kids programmed the tools themselves, to fulfill their particular needs. The programmer in question might have been ten years old, who’d programmed his own app, because he

just couldn’t find anything that did what he wanted to do. The most respected demos were the ones where creative problem solving was apparent in the programming. Programming a, for example, Commodore 64 was different from what is construed as programming these days. Now we have access to advanced programming languages that make it easier. Current computers have also been designed, as far as power and parts go, to deal with heavy-duty multimedia programs, with their separate 3D cards and graphic libraries. As a result, the older and newer generations of demo makers tend to argue about which is more important: programming chops or graphic design. The best demos are brilliant in both areas, it’s just that today it’s much easier to make impressive demos without any programming skills. The older generation tends to call for more technical creativity in today’s demos, instead of relying on audiovisual tricks alone. The point, according to them, should be to challenge what the computer is capable of. One of the cardinal unwritten rules of the demo scene was that the best demos should always look and sound better than the best games out at the same time. This is one of the reasons why, after DOOM for PC was published, Amiga coders spent an insane amount of time and effort trying to produce similar 3D mazes on their computers. An added incentive was the fact that making something like a 3D maze on an Amiga was incredibly difficult. This made for an interesting challenge and a source of much competition. Now that we’ve reached the first years of the 21st century, demos and 3D engines are so close to each other, it’s hard to tell who is leading the game. Some say that the game companies pretty much took the lead already

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31 / 32 The Clocksmiths of Real-Time Even though comparing demos to movies should be avoided (so there is no misunderstanding between real-time and pre-calculated), it’s still interesting to look at the similarities in their development.

in the end of the 1990s. Programming a rugged 3D demo engine functions as a calling card for many programmers who’ve set their sights on the game industry as an employer. Getting started with 3D programming is fairly easy these days. Current languages and tools, not to mention the powerful computers almost everyone has access to, make the threshold a lot lower than it was in the very early days, when getting the necessary power out of the computer meant hacking right into machinery. In other words, the kids wrote hexadecimal code, line by line, into the computer’s memory. There was no source code to augment or tweak. Coding required a flexible mindset, as the process itself was not flexible at all. After that most of the demos were written in assembler and there was source code. Nowadays demo coders use common sophisticated programming languages. It was the same with the early musicians and graphic artists. They had to use joysticks or the keyboard to change parameters in the code and then play it back or look at it to see what happened. Some of them had to change the code itself and recompile. There was no way you could sketch or jam. This way of working helped the makers understand the principles the operation of the computer was based on from a variety of viewpoints and make economical art using a small amount of memory. The impact was based on just a few colors or a couple of sounds.

The fact that demos were distributed via mail, straight from one artist to another, bears more than a passing resemblance the underground video culture of a couple of different decades, or the spread of DJ mixes and remixes. There are comparisons to be drawn in the development of demos and movies, too. Both started with a single stationary camera aimed at a static stage that contained mobile elements. Little by little, movement is increased, ending up with an active and mobile camera, with the structure of the storytelling changing from a series of separate scenes to a more fluid form that tries to control, in addition to the different elements on screen, time and the viewer’s experience on an expanding sensory and emotional scale. The fact that most of the demo makers use aliases and are recognizable, mostly to other demo makers, by their styles makes demos similar to graffiti culture, and demos have been referred to as digital graffiti. The early crack intros can be compared to tags, the quick-and-dirty signatures drawn by graffiti artists in as many public places as possible. They’re both a way of marking territory and making your alias famous. Many demo scene graphic artists used to paint trains, too, and there are clear similarities between the logos of some demo teams and graffiti styles and techniques. In many ways, the demo scene was a precursor to the online communities that get talked about in conjunction with the Internet. The demo scene operated according to many of the same principles later adopted by virtual

communities and in the realm of open source work. For example, ’ripping’, or taking credit for the work of someone else in the scene, was frowned upon and the punishment would be ostracism from the community and a reputation as a ’lamer’. One’s reputation in the community was of the utmost importance. The software and demos were also made in a distributed manner, often in different parts of the world. So, the similarity between the demo scene and, for example, Linux and communal art is easy to see. Demos are works of art. The people who make them (programmers included) are artists. There is no way to question this. Looking into the makers’ perceptions of their actions and artistic personas is interesting, though. Many of them disavow the conceptual burdens that come with taking part in a discourse on art and the recognition offered by the art world. For them gaining recognition within their own community is more important. Naturally, the urge to dazzle the general audience, on both a technical and esthetic level, is always present, but other demo makers are often the only people capable of understanding the innovative nature of the works without an indepth knowledge of programming, as well as the limitations of the hardware used. Thus, encouragement and criticism from one’s peers and respected members of the community is a lot more important than widespread fame. Demo art rarely ”says” anything or comments on society. Still, even though the makers insist that demos are made ”for the hell of it”, they are commenting on society via technology and software just by engaging in the act of producing demos. The indirect, and sometimes direct, societal criticism that demos offer pertains to the uses and rationales of the chosen computers, operating systems, tools and distribution channels. Information technology is no longer separate from society or a

pile of nerdy toys. Some very important parts of society are built on code these days. In this environment, the people who are familiar with the history and operational principles of the technologies and software, as well as their potential for creative use, are the ones capable of making real political and artistic choices and statements. A clear statement in the demo scene is the careful nurturing of innovative technical implementations and quality criteria for digital esthetics, as well as criticism based on the aforementioned. In addition to demos, it applies to computer games, mobile applications, digital media and information systems. The programmers, artists and musicians instill the values of the demo culture in the products and services of the information society and communication culture. Demo artists are meticulous about the quality of their output, from the almost invisible little details to the overall concept. The work has to take into account the reality of both the technology used and the user community. Demo makers are probably closer to artisans than artists. Many artisans combine tradition-rich and strict quality standards with esthetic values. A clocksmith wants to create a watch that looks unique, and keeps better time than any other. A satisfied user is a rewarding experience for a clocksmith, but his professional and artistic identity depends on what other clocksmiths see in his clockworks and design. Only the community of clocksmiths can appreciate the clockworks, the methods and materials used to create it, as well as the challenges faced. And only the community can bestow true master status on the clocksmith, not the audience or societyat-large.

f

The people who make demos are not so much wandering conceptual artists, but the master clocksmiths of real-time digital media art.

t

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Tracker music

Case: Tracker music by Lassi Tasajärvi

Let It Beep! A widespread culture of making digital music was born in the 1980s, when the first home computers that were capable of more than beeping became available.

he most advanced sound capabilities of the time were available in Commodore 64 (1 MHz), the most popular computer back then. For the longest time, it had no competition in game markets. A few of the programmer-composers employed by the games industry, like the legendary Rob Hubbard, developed composing tools and technologies for the computer and gave birth to the sound that united a whole generation and is frequently borrowed from by both experimental and popular music. In the early days, no tools existed that used the computer itself as the instrument, so you had to know how to program your own tools. In 1985, Commodore launched the 16-bit Amiga computer. The digital sound of the Amiga was high quality compared to earlier systems. In 1987 the Amiga 500 (7.14 Mhz) was launched. It cost the equivalent of 840 euros and quickly became the de facto standard platform for people making music at home. Earlier home computers were only capable of generating artificial sounds, but the Amiga was capable of recording (with an extra digitizing hardware) and playing back any real audio, too. The back panel had a handy RCA output. The computer that people bought to play games could also be used as a sampler and a sequencer, both tools that had previously been available only at expensive professional studios.

Tracker music was born as a result of programs developed for the Amiga 500 during the late 1980s, when, in addition to the demo or computer game code and graphics, a small diskette (720 kb, for example) had to hold the music, too. Tracker programs made the use of your own samples possible and provided a simpler way of feeding notes into the computer. Using free, but functional software was a cheaper alternative to buying expensive synthesizers and MIDI gear. Tracker-style programs were already available for the Commodore 64, but it wasn’t until Karsten Obarski created the ’Ultimate Soundtracker’ composing program that a standard started to develop for samplebased composing. The 4 channel, 28kHZ sampling frequency Soundtracker was developed further and cloned in the demo scene at an astonishing pace. Several new versions were published, the best known and most important of which were the D.O.C Soundtracker, Noisetracker and Protracker. Trackers were augmented with sample editors, support for more instruments and the option to save files in module form, which combined music and sample data into a single file. To this day, music made with trackers is referred to as mod music, despite the fact that the mod-file format is no longer in use. Tracker music consists of samples and programming code, that dictates what order the samples are played back in and modifies them in real-time. The parameters that can be changed include volume, pitch, etc. The brilliant part is that you only need to load the sample into the memory once. After this, when music is played, the one sound is used

over and over. So, you can play an entire song using just a few samples that you vary only in pitch and duration. Depending on how much juice your computer has, you can also modify sounds in individual channels or instruments, using the same effects used in a professional setting. Tracker music is similar to the more widely known MIDI music, the standard for which was created in the early 1980s. Tracker music is kind of a combination of MIDI and audio. A tracker file contains the necessary samples, as well as the control code. A MIDI file only contains information about which ready-made sound resources on your soundcard are used, or how an external device, a synthesizer for example, is controlled. A MIDI file is very small, size wise, but has limitations, like the inability to save human speech. Trackers also have an advantage in that you can sample your own instruments.

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35 / 36 Keep It Sample Samples were instrumental in raising the quality of DIY electronic music, as well as making the process itself fun. Anyone could use their own synthesizer to sample sounds into their computer and use these to make authentic sounding music. Tracker music had an open source ethic about it, too. Anyone could look at how the songs were put together, as well as use the samples. In addition to individual songs, sample compilation diskettes spread around the world rapidly. A typical tracker song in the early days would take up about 50-200 kilobytes of space and you could compress it when saving it. The composers learned to make effective music using techniques that took up very little space. These skills are now in great demand for mobile services, as well as with makers of mobile game platforms and, most specially, devices like Game Boy Advance. There are severe limitations in terms of memory and disk space in both these mediums, so the file formats and techniques used in the PC world are useless. The most significant limitation presented by composing on the Amiga was the fact that only four channels were available. Panning or mixing the channels was also not an option. If you wanted to do anything a little more involved and demanding, it required immense amounts of time, perseverance and imagination. In the mid-1990s, the tracker scene switched to using the more powerful PCs, which eliminated the limitations placed on file size by the Amiga. At this point, it was possible to do almost anything with a home computer. The Fast Tracker for the PC continued the tradition of the Amiga trackers and created a whole new community of tracker users. The Internet provided a never-ending source of samples and a channel for trading songs. This resulted in an underground

Mod music scene that was independent of the larger demo scene. The tracker age started coming to a close around 2000, as the capabilities of PCs continued growing exponentially every year. This resulted in a series of easy-to-use software synthesizers and emulators to be made available for home use. All the essential gear found at a real studio could thus be had at home, in software form. Basically, you could replace a million euros worth of hardware with one 2000 euro computer. These days, tracker and mod music unites a large number of electronic (and other) musicians around the world. Hundreds of sound professionals who now work in, for example, the game industry, started composing using the same programs. Computer game music from the early years is being mixed and released at a good pace, sometimes even covered using traditional instruments. Old demo scene musicians use different aliases to release records and play live shows. People who burned out on 8-bit music in the 1980s are going back to their roots to compose music for mobile games. The computer at work receives an online, oldskool radio broadcast. Hours and hours of 8- and 16-bit music, streamed in mp3 form. Data doesn’t wear out.

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Utilising a handheld toy from the past. Case: Interview with Johan Kotlinski by Mikael Schustin

The handheld Gameboy was first introduced in 1989 by Japanese Nintendo and has now sold more than 100 million items. Hundreds of game titles have been released – amongst them classics like Tetris, Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda – as well as different accessories like cameras, printers and lights. But one of the most interesting releases so far is no game. Little Sound Dj (LSDJ) is a very powerful music composing tool that turns the Gameboy classic into a complex working tool for music composers and performers. LSDJ takes full advantage of the portability and user interface of this late eighties device and has attracted the attention of not only old-school demo sceners, but also musicians from a wide variety of backgrounds, electronic or not.

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Interview on ICQ

m_brain:has Nintendo authorized this in any way?

m_brain: hi there...so are you ready for an interview? =) m_brain: ahaha, ok.

j_kotlinski: i’m a little tired but let’s do it! m_brain: well, first you can maybe give a very short presentation of who you are, name age etc. j_kotlinski: ok... j_kotlinski: my name is johan kotlinski, i’m 24 years old and currently studying media engineering & technology at the royal institute of technology in stockholm j_kotlinski: ... i am also making music in my spare time, run a small hobbyist label named bleep street... also i am known for having programmed little sound dj, a music program for the gameboy m_brain: yes, little sound dj! thats what we should talk about =) .j_kotlinski: yep! m_brain:as for now we could call it lsdj, right? so, what is lsdj? .j_kotlinski: yes. lsdj is a music program for the gameboy. usually it is used in the form

.j_kotlinski: no, i never expected so many people to use it. of a usual gameboy cartridge you put it in the gameboy. and when started, it allows you to compose music on your gameboy. meaning it is not a game, but a software for making music. m_brain: normally most people don’t really consider a gameboy as a tool for making music, but more as a toy. but by using lsdj that changes radically right?

m_brain: do you know how many users have actually purchased the software? .j_kotlinski: i don’t keep track. it’s hundreds, but not thousands m_brain: ok...the thing about changing a consumer device into a tool, was that also one of the original ideas, or was it mainly created out of personal challenge and needs?

.j_kotlinski: you could say that, at least it helped some people to use it as a creative tool instead of a consumer device...

.j_kotlinski: not at all. it’s a positive effect by coincidence. i set out making it for fun, curiosity and challenge.

m_brain: so was that one of your goals when you started making lsdj?

m_brain: when did you start working on it? and when was a first public version available?

.j_kotlinski: many different... 1) i wanted to see how good it could get. 2) i wanted to have a music program that would fit my purposes. .j_kotlinski: oh, i read the question wrong

.j_kotlinski: i started working on it summer 2000. v0.01a was out 2000-07-06, v1.0 was out 2001-01-22, and i started selling cartridges in the spring 2001...

.j_kotlinski: not at all... m_brain: have you had any reaction from them? .j_kotlinski: no, i haven’t heard from them. m_brain: you could have developed a similar tool for some other hardware. why did you choose a gameboy? .j_kotlinski: it was easy and fun to program. also it was a thankful target. it had great possibilities that, as i saw it, no one really took the full potential of. m_brain: what possibilities do you mean? technical or..? .j_kotlinski: hmm. i mean possibilities for making music. there were other music programs around that were technically capable, if you look at the specifications. but no one had a good interface that provided a decent environment for making music. m_brain: one can also see the gameboy as very limited hardware wise compared to modern PC’s etc.. do you see this as an advantage or disadvantage?

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the keyboard - in fact you never have to move your hand at all. it helps a lot. m_brain: haha, yes that’s true. i was very impressed when i started using lsdj. and apparently others have feel that this is a very appealing tool. do you think this also have to do with the hype of the ”retro game sound”? the sound of the gameboy is quite unique...

you have some musical collaborations with some of the users. .j_kotlinski:: hmm, it’s hard to tell. i have a pretty good view of the dedicated user base who try to be social and spread their work, but the rest is of course impossible to tell.

.j_kotlinski: i am sure the sound attracts many people. together with the fact you can carry it with you on the bus. .j_kotlinski: on good and bad, the system shaped the way the program was designed very much. especially in terms of small display and the lack of input devices as keyboard or mouse. it forced me to innovate some interface solutions and concepts that would seem out of place in modern PC’s, but makes total sense on the gameboy. i would definitely say it’s an advantage, as the program is more fast-worked than any PC sequencer i have seen. especially the small screen and the few buttons help a lot. it means you never have to shift your focus or move your hands between the mouse and

m_brain: so there is some sort of community around lsdj?

m_brain: so do you have a background/experience in old computers like the c64, amigas etc.? .j_kotlinski: yes. my dad bought a c64 when i was five, later i bought an amiga and had lots of good times with it... i mostly played games, hanged around in bulletin board systems or programmed basic. and also i made (and make) music with the amiga... m_brain: do you also work with more modern equipment aswell? .j_kotlinski: i have some synthesizers, but i don’t really use them.

m_brain: why do you think this lo-tech retro sound has become so popular? .j_kotlinski: hmm. partly i think that all the people who were kids when this was popular have now grown up and come into a productive age. also because of the obvious 80s retro that seems to be everywhere... m_brain: so do you know who are the users of lsdj? i know

.j_kotlinski: kind of. the most activity is in the mailing list, where people can discuss things and help each other, and also try to push for shows or their music. also there is an open web page at wiki.littlesounddj.com, where people can send in their own information. m_brain:are any of the users participating in the development? .j_kotlinski: partly. a guy called firestarter in Germany is making a cable that can be used to connect the gameboy for MIDI synthesizers. but no one except me has done contributions to the program it-

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43 / 44 console subdivision. but we are mostly focusing on social and cultural activity, arranging parties and so on... m_brain: what kindda social activities? could you maybe describe this?

self. m_brain: lsdj is not an open source project, right? have you considered making it open? .j_kotlinski:: yes, i have. but i don’t see the point at the moment. if anybody is interested in making modifications, they are welcome to ask me for the code. m_brain: and no one has asked for it so far? .j_kotlinski: i think one or two guys have. but i haven’t received any code from them so far. m_brain: ok. just jumping back to the layout/interface part again... why did you choose a tracker style interface? trackers are mainly known from c64’s and ataris? .j_kotlinski: i think it is the most economic way to do present the data, both when it comes to screen size, code size and time of implementation. then it was also a lot inspired by musicline editor, my favorite music program for the

amiga... m_brain: do you also have a background in the demo scene? .j_kotlinski: (...by the way i don’t really see it as a tracker. song arrangement and so on is very different from the classic trackers from the amiga. also it’s not sample based. you could possibly call it a nextgeneration tracker. a notable thing is that almost every pc ”tracker” (except buzz) are still stuck with the old concepts) .j_kotlinski: no, i don’t. i never was very interested in showing off :) m_brain: hahaha :-D .j_kotlinski: i am a member of the c64 group “hack’n’trade”. and also “1.000.000 boys”, the

.j_kotlinski: autoboy of hack’n’trade has been arranging the 8-bit/commodore-only ”little computer people” party for five years now. it’s a party where commodore 64 enthusiasts bring their computers, meet up, booze and have fun and also compete in coding, graphics, music... you could read more at: www.lcp.c64.org m_brain: k. so you have a certain fascination with old computers =) why? (hehehe) .j_kotlinski: ha... maybe i did before... now i mostly go there to meet up with friends. i never bring computers or anything. i still use the amiga because it’s really useful. but i think old electronics are generally tasteful. m_brain: ok...i guess we are almost done. what is the future of lsdj? will you continue to develop it and maybe also for other platforms?

.j_kotlinski: i don’t know. at the moment i don’t have the energy to push it in my spare time. it depends on what i want and can do after i finish studying. m_brain: so no radically changing of plans =) .j_kotlinski: no, i won’t sell it to nintendo until they give me an offer first... m_brain: and if it’s a good offer? .j_kotlinski: i’d sell it. but i don’t see that happen m_brain: ok, thank you johan =) .j_kotlinski: thank you mikael!

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COMPUTER PARTIES

Case: The Gathering By Bent Stamnes

So, what is a computer party you ask? Cracking and the origins of the demo scene are well covered in this book already, but what is not covered is that people didn’t only crack games in their dirty basements and shared cracks and games with their neighbors and friends on different BBSes (for those lucky few who actually owned a modem). No, they also banded together and formed small clubs and held informal gatherings where they shared not only their cracks and games, but also their experiences and programming-tricks. Without further ado, let us take a look at the beginning, the spreading, the appeal of computer parties

and what they have evolved into since greasy teenagers gathered to listen to cheezy disco music, crack games and look at 4-bit softporn. What are computer parties? A computer party is pretty easily explained – people bring their computers and gather to exchange ideas, code, tips on making music or graphics and of course to compete in the infamous demo-competitions that have spawned some of the greatest pieces of computer art in history. These last years international gaming-events and competitions have also been held. Computer parties, like everything

else on this earth, evolve. We no longer live in the age where computers are expensive and computer-enthusiasts are few and far between. In Norway, three out of four households own one or more computers and the glory of the internet has brought people with similar interests closer together. Gone are the times where people spent weeks waiting for a few floppy disks to make their way from their friends around Europe, carrying the latest demos and musicmodules, and also the torment of discovering that half of them got destroyed in transit and you had to send them a letter asking for new copies. Bummer. The age of ”click here to download” is here, and the demo scene and computer parties have changed significantly over 20-odd years There are many things that have not changed though, apart from the size and scope of the parties themselves; people still get together to meet their information-age soul mates and share experiences, stories and technical knowledge, only now these gatherings are no longer reserved for those selected few. We now face the fact that being interested in your computer and what you can do with it is the new wine, and that many more people feel the need to get together and spend time plucking at their com-

puters and talk to strangers who also are magically drawn to their beige, over sized calculators.

The history of The Gathering amongs gatherings Back in 1991 there were not many parties in Norway, and the biggest of them rarely attracted more than 50-100 people (the big, big ones). It was at one of these parties that a demo group called Crusaders spent most of their time coding demos on their Amigas and badmouthing the organizing of the party. Nothing was good enough for these guys and they were really agroup of the most obnoxious people you could imagine. The organizers of the party got sick and tired of their antics and more or less kicked them out - ”If you think it’s so damn easy, organize your own party!” they told them, and so they did.

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THE In 1992, after about a year in preparations, the first The Gathering (or ”TG” for short) was arranged. The organizers expected 600 to turn up. 1100 people came. Needless to say, the party was technically more or less a fiasco, but that didn’t matter - the organizers knew that they had something and in between the frequent loss of power in the hall, everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. The next year, 1400 people attended, and the organizing staff had grown also. The party again had it’s technical difficulties, but was still a great success for everyone attending. TG grew, and everyone in the demo scene knew that it was the party above all other parties.

In 1994, rumors of the party had reached even the smallest corners of Europe and almost 1800 people came and made The Gathering one of the biggest computer parties in the world. The Amiga-group Andromeda won the demo-competition with their now legendary ”Sequential”-demo, which set the standard for many more productions to come. The organizers were of course thrilled with both the attendance and the quality of the productions and decided on a bold move for the upcoming event. In 1995 the party was moved from the greater Oslo-area to the city of Stavanger, to the west of Norway. This resulted in a drop in attendance to approximately 1500 people came because of travel distanc-

view es and other complications. Even because of this, the demo ”Dope” by the Finnish demo group Complex took home the grand prize, and the party was yet again established as the source of great productions. The organizers promised themselves to find a better place to host TG next year. They could not go back to their previous arena since the attendance-figures told them that they would most certainly outgrow it, and bringing many people together was on the whole a good part of that it was all about. The upcoming party in 1996 was the first one held in The Vikingship in Hamar. Build as an olympic arena for the 1994 Olympic Games at Lillehammer, the hall was just

perfect for the purpose of a computer party, and The Gathering has not moved from the arena to this day. Approximately 2500 people attended and once and for all set the standard for all other computer parties to follow. It was now the worlds biggest computer party. That year, things changed. The organizers started to see a change in what people came to the party. Not only did they notice that there were other people than demo sceners attending, shockingly enough; girls came too and even more disturbing was the fact that they brought their computers as well. The years to come only contributed to the fact that The Gathering is not only the biggest computer party around, it also draws all kinds of

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lights, camera action!

people together, not just hardwaregeeks or demo sceners, but ordinary people, interested in meeting their friends from chat rooms on the internet and gamers as well. In 1997 all 3300 tickets were sold out, laying the foundation for a bizarre problem to follow – there were simply not enough tickets. In 1998, after a revision of the seating-plan, 4300 people invaded Hamar during the easter vacation, and 10001500 people unfortunately had to be turned away. The following year 4800 people came, and approximately 2500 people were turned away. The luxury problem kept recurring through 2000, 2001 and 2002, with more and more people getting turned away from the event because of lack of space.

Then came 2003. The organizers continously searched for other venues to hold more people, but the sad fact remained – none was bigger or better suited than The Vikingship. Many meetings and creative discussions later, a threeyear contract was signed with the olympic arena and a new floor plan was concocted to seat the impressive number of over 5200 attendees (not counting day-by-day visitors). The Gathering was back – bigger and better than ever. The fight for the seats were now public knowledge and the visitors knew they had to compete to get their hands on the tickets. With the seatingproblem dealt with as best as they could, the organizers once more turned their heads to other aspects of the party; the quality of

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51 / 52 the party itself, the entertainment, the competitions, the fun. TG had it all. In 2003 there were hosted concerts with amongst others, the world famous electronica-band Ugress, there were seminars with Direct3D-developers and anti-virus companies, and the competition prizes rose above the grand total of 220.000 NOK (approximately 26.800 EURO). The Norwegian Department of Commerce even handed out two special prizes for most exciting commercial product/most promising new establishment and also for best practical concept for a new public service.

everything you try for the first time, it didn’t work out quite the way the organizers had expected but it was clear that a network was a service that the people wanted and so they tried different combinations and techniques to get everything up and running.

The technological aspect

In 1998 they decided to opt for a twisted pair-based network, and it turned out to work a lot better than coaxial (what a shocker). There were still some issues with network browsing and homemade tools made by the crew members themselves were used to give access to every part of the network from every possible point in the hall. This tool was funnily enough called ”Harlem: The bad neighborhood” and performed its duty well.

Through the years The Gathering has gone through some major changes, and one field has been affected more than any other; the technological side. The early years did not have any kind of network service and all swapping of data was done on tapes or floppy disks. In 1995 there were isolated incidents of many small networks in the hall, but neither of them had more than 10-15 users each. It was not until 1996 that the first TG-initiated network was set up. A coaxial network that was supposed to connect everyone in the hall to the same backbone. Well, like almost

It was not until the year 2000 (or ”The Gathering 1900” which the party was nicknamed, because of the infamous millennium-bug) that the network really took on a shape that would make most people raise their eyebrows - with more than 4800 network connections and a peak of 2800 users a second, the organizers tried to get the world record for ”largest temporary computer network” accepted by the Guinness Book of World Records, but unfortunately the representatives from Guinness could not make it to the party place. Even though the record attempt was witnessed

by representatives of the Norwegian police, it was found void. Since then, the organizers have tried to get representatives from Guinness to come and affirm the record, but so far they have not been able to do so. As of the year 2003, the world largest temporary network is approximately 5400 access-points and is, unofficially, a world record. The year 2003 also was the first year that ”cyberattendance” was introduced as a term for The Gathering. With a internet TV-station that broadcasted news, live events and pre-recorded shows, TG managed to reach viewers from all around the world, pulling an average of 30 megabits of data from their videoservers each day. With regards to total amount of data transferred, the network passed on a total of over one petabyte in 2003 and the backbone held down the fort all through the event.

Business point of view

top: picture from the ”stratosphere” concert (a norwegian techno-group) middle: gisle martens meyer, from ”ugress” with his setup bottom: homebuilt rack to store partystuff by creative participants

One might easily be led to believe that a computer party such as The Gathering is all about fun and games, but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of business interest. In fact; a trend researcher from Coca-Cola International printed in Dagens Naeringsliv (Norway’s largest business news-

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53 / 54 paper): ”There will be seven dominating youth cultures in the future... Number one of these will be the technoid youth culture, an early sign of this is for example The Gathering held in Hamar, Norway every year.”

Wax, InnerLoop, Electronic Arts and Remedy Entertainment, to name a few. Did you also know that the worlds most widely used 3D benchmarking program, 3D Mark, was developed by early demo scene pioneers?

This is of course something that the organizers behind TG are very proud of, and it didn’t just pop out of thin air – The Gathering has always been considered a melting pot for young and talented people and businesses have been recruiting talent from the party since the very first one in 1992.

The little man

The games industry is a good example of a business that always have had tight bonds with the demo scene and people going to computer parties. In the early nineties, the demo sceners had technology that took years to make it’s way into computer games and the game companies knew this. They started hiring young and brilliant minds to work on the next generation games to get an edge on all the other games companies and soon this became a trend you see even today. The ”bedroom programmers, musicians, graphicians and 3d-animators” are talent to be reckoned with. Many of the worlds most known game developers and titles have demo sceners in their ranks. Team 17, FunCom, Razor-

Of course, the demo scene culture doesn’t always attend huge parties such as The Gathering. Many smaller parties also co-exist peacefully with the larger parties, because they cater to the niches, like pure Amiga/C64-parties like Kindergarden or outdoor oldskool scener-parties like Solskogen. Many many more are arranged all over Europe at all times of the year, and people never seem to get tired of meeting their friends from other countries, sharing a beer or two in the sunshine and even colaborate on their next impressive demo-presentations. Multimedia, it seems, is without borders. It moves through the Internet, through the rows at a large computer party and even just between two good neighbors, sharing their code and making their first production in a dirty basement.

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demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene demoscenedemoscene

demosceneexhibition

case demoskene.katastro.fi

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demoscene exhibition

”The demoskene.katastro.fi exhibition premiered in Kiasma, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki between 28.3.-15.6.2003.”

case:demoscene.katastro.fi 2003

The exhibition presented demo pieces and the demo scene as a cultural phenomenon. The exhibition showcased demo pieces made by the artists of the katastro.fi community using the equipment from the 1980s and 1990s originally used to make them. Some newer material and commissioned pieces by the same artists were also included. Approx. 50 000 people visited the exhibition and it was highly successful especially among the younger visitors of the Museum. The exhibition also got good media coverage from both the art and the IT media. katastro.fi is a media art association established by people who first met each other through the demo scene network as a step from underground culture to the world of digital media art.

In 2003 katastro.fi celebrated its 5th anniversary. During the years katastro.fi has been recognized as ”one of the most influential and innovative multimedia art platforms on the European scene”. The exhibition shed light on the emergence of the association, with the focus on demos made by its members. They range from early demos programmed for primitive home computers to new works designed for mobile devices. Documenting the equipment and methods used in the making of demo art pieces was of the utmost importance of the exhibition. Old works were carefully curated and fixed to loop and run 24/7 to avoid crashes and to rule out the need for constant museum staff care. Everything had to run in real-time

with original machines. Using video or DVD playback or any method of fake looping was out of question. The exhibition was built to travel to other museums and electronic art festivals. The goal of the exhibition is to provide the visitors with a look at one of the avenues along which media art has developed from the 1980s to the present day. The point-of-view is that of a generation that grew up with computers and games, making digital art using new technologies. What makes the exhibition remarkable is the fact that these pieces have never before been exhibited in one place at large, augmented by commentary on the demo scene as a cultural phenomenon and as a part of hacker and cracker cultures.

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Examples of works shown at the exhibition Virtual Dreams : ”Chaosland” 1993 Chaosland was originally programmed for a demo competition where the maximum allowed size of the demo was 40 kilobytes. The size limitation does not detract from the impressiveness of the demo, on the contrary: it is the external limitations that make demo programmers surpass themselves, write extremely streamlined code, and make the primitive computers do something unprecedented. Special features in Chaosland include music squeezed into a very small package and the chaos zoomer effect that has already become a classic. An extremely rare feature is the use of a naked male instead of a female figure.

CNCD & Parallax : ”dEEP Psilocybin Mix” 1995 Typical of its time, the demo uses texts superimposed on visual effects. 3D mazes, familiar from the PC game Doom, was one of the few effects that were adopted from the PC world to Amiga – generally it was the other way round. The music can no longer be compared with the melodic tunes made with the 4-track tracker software. The demo bends the genre clearly towards experimental electronic music. Remixes of demos are rarely released, but minor updates are possible, for example, for fixing bugs in the programme.

katastro.fi : ”godog” 1998 godog is programmed with Java and can be viewed with an Internet browser. Using new programming languages to replicate classic early effects and objects is very typical of the demo scene. Each new language is a challenge to the programmer. godog uses textual narrative superimposed on visual effects, a relatively seldom used genre. The narrative element in demos is generally audiovisual, and textual elements are either insider messages for the community, or included simply because they look good!

CREDITS CHAOSLAND:

Coding by Graphics by Music by

Timo Aila [Tsunami] Mikko Lipiäinen [Dean] Ferenc Tompai [D-Mage] Mikko Lipiäinen [Dean]

Equipment: Amiga 500 RAM: 512 Kb CPU speed: 7,14 MHz DEEP - PSILOCYBIN MIX:

Coding by Graphics by Music by

Jussi Salmi [Debug] & Janne Juhola [Simply] Tommi Hakala [Bandog] Jani Isoranta [Destop] Mikko Karvonen [Yolk] Jarno Kilpiä [Legend]

Equipment: Amiga 1200 RAM: 8 Mb CPU speed: 40 MHz GODOG:

Coding by Graphics by Music by ”dEEP mix” by CNCD & Parallax

Jarno Heikkinen [Jmagic] Jukka Kaartinen [Jugi] Erik Lyden [Carebear]

Equipment: Pentium III RAM: 256 Mb CPU speed: 450 MHz

”Chaosland” by Virtual Dreams

”godog” by katastro.fi

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Orange : “The Nonstop Ibiza Experience” 2000

Mikko Wilkman: “The Incredible IFS-System” 2003

katastro.fi : “Crime Minister of Europe” 2003

This demo represents the experimental style typical of its authors, combining the use of low resolution as a stylistic effect, visuals carefully synchronised with the music, and 2D graphics that combine idiosyncratic comic-strip style with Surrealist effects. The structure of the piece is reminiscent of the narrative device of early demos, where effects and images are presented in separate sections.

The work is based on the famous Iterated Function System fractal algorithm. As the name implies, the algorithm is based upon iteration. Thousands of iterations are performed on a coordinate point while changing the coordinates through a series of multiplication and addition selected at random from a predetermined set. The demo adds trigonometric operations, polar coordinate conversions and changes in the colours of the coordinate points. As a result, new qualities are constantly introduced to the fractal image. The interesting aspect of the demo is that the programmer has hardly any control over the end result. He or she only gives a set of limits to the algorithm, within which the computer generates the image from random numbers. Each image is unique and transitory, because it is not recorded anywhere in the computer. Consequently each viewing experience is different and new.

The demo for Nokia 7650 was made for the exhibition, where it received its world premiere. The demo includes several classic Amiga effects, such as an endless zoom into a fractal and 2D bump mapping, where the structure of a surface is revealed by a moving highlight. In classic “old skool” style, the demo introduces a brand new effect, in this case a 3D object with glowing highlights rendered with the radiocity method. The demo also utilises several post processing effects, such as radial blur, used to create the impression of a light source shining behind the surface, and median filter, used to level the image and reduce noise.

”Ibiza experience” by orange

THE NONSTOP IBIZA EXPERIENCE:

Coding by Graphics by Music by

Mikko Wilkman [Hoplite] Lassi Nikko [Dune] Iiro Harra [Der Piipo] Lassi Nikko [Dune]

Equipment: Pentium 4 RAM: 256 Mb CPU speed: 2,4 GHz THE INCREDIBLE IFS-SYTEM:

Coding by

Mikko Wilkman

Equipment: Pentium 4 RAM: 256 Mb CPU speed: 2,4 MHz CRIME MINISTER OF EUROPE:

Coding by

Janne Hellsten [Galvados] Jussi Räsänen [Juliet] Jan Achrenius [Xenit] Timo Aila [Tsunami] Ville Miettinen [Wili] Petri Kero Graphics by Iiro Harra [Der Piipo] Jukka Kaartinen [Jugi] Music by Mikko Karvonen [Yolk] Gerbera(TM)SVG rastering: Hybrid Graphics Ltd. astro.fi

”Crime Minister” by kat

”IFS-system” by wilkman

CREDITS

Equipment: Nokia 7650 RAM: 4 Mb CPU speed: 100 MHz

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katastro.fi : ”Codename Chinadoll” 1999 This demo attracted a lot of attention immediately after its release for the innovative way it combines 2D and 3D graphics. The effects are presented simultaneously on several layers at once, instead of separate effect sequences. The work is a prime example of how important planning, directing and editing can be in a demo. The demo was also presented at the Sonar festival in Barcelona in 2002.

demoskene.katastro.fi web The katastro.fi website is part of the exhibition and an exhibition work in its own right. The exhibition works can be downloaded there for viewing on your computer. The site also contains information about the exhibition and its background, as well as a larger sample of the demos by the exhibition artists. The website is located at: http://demoscene.katastro.fi

demoskene.katastro.fi exhibition credits CREDITS The artists: Jan Achrenius, Timo Aila, Marc van den Bovenkamp, Tommi Hakala, Iiro Harra, Jarno Heikkinen, Janne Hellstén, Petri Häkkinen, Jani Isoranta, Janne Juhola, Antti Jäderholm, Markus Kaarlonen, Jukka Kaartinen, Mikko Kallinen, Kalle Kananen, Mikko Karvonen, Jarno Kilpiä, Janne Kontkanen, Saku Lehtinen, Mikko Lipiäinen, Erik Lydèn, Eetu Martola, Antti Miettinen, Ville Miettinen, Lassi Nikko, Juha Pinola, Janne Pulkkinen, Jussi Räsänen, Jussi Salmi, Saku Tiainen, Ferenc Tompai, Eero Tunkelo, Sami Voutilainen, Mikko Wilkman Curator: Lassi Tasajärvi Logo, poster, flyer, invite: Olli Kuopila Programme: Jukka Kaartinen (layout) Olli Kuopila (graphics) Lassi Tasajärvi (editing) Arttu Tolonen (translations)

”codename chinadoll” by katastro.fi

www: Markus Grannenfelt (graphics) Mikko Karvonen (DHTML) Olli Kuopila (music) Mikko Uromo (DHTML) Production: katastro.fi & Kiasma Producer: Lassi Tasajärvi

CODENAME CHINADOLL:

Graphics and editing by Jani Isoranta [Destop] Programmed by Janne Kontkanen [Olwi] Music by Mikko Karvonen [Yolk] Lassi Nikko [Dune] SurRender 3D(TM) Hybrid Graphics Ltd. Equipment: Pentium 4 RAM: 256 Mb CPU speed: 2,4 MHz

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ONE.

TWO.

_Oldskool: The Classic Era {1980-1991} Computers Commodore 64 Amiga 500

THREE,

Demo Features and Styles Crack Intros, Single Part Demos, Megademos Programming rulez! Scrolltexts, Sprites, Bobs, Dots and Equalizers First Demos with Simple Vector Objects and Routines Typical Parties 0 to 100 participants Took place at peoples home and High School Gyms Held outside major cities Copyparty orientation No competitions or big prizes or heavy security Boozing

TheDemosceneEras: Old>Middle>Nu {1980-200X}

Status of the First Sceners Home town action, still coding in your own room Studying, summer jobs Dreaming of a job in a National Game Magazine Music Using D.O.C Soundtracker or Protracker Samples from st-01,02 or ripped from demos No own synthesizers or 100% self made samples Melodic ’mod-style’ music Spreading and trading Floppies, Discs, Modem The Big Question C64 or Amiga Elite or Lamer

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_Middleskool: The Modern Era {1992-1996} Computers Amiga OCS/AGA, PC( x86) & DOS Backrooms are filled with abandoned used Commodore 64s Demo Features and Styles Design and Art Demos Tracktros, Dentros, Multros etc. Complex vector routines, effects and objects Typical Parties Hundreds of participants Took Place At High School Gyms and City Arenas Started to focus on Major Cities Long lasting Party Brands were born (The Assembly, The Gathering, The Party) Regular serious competitions and multiple categories First small sponsors and security No more indoor booze Status of the First Sceners Moved into a bigger city to study or work Getting a higher education, working in a small computer company Music Advanced Amiga trackers, multi channel trackers, first PC trackers Own synthesizers and samples Using ”real” music styles (jazz, quitar) Beat oriented music (Techno, breakbeat, Aphex Twin wannabes) Spreading and trading Discs, modem (calling-cards), FTP The Big Question Amiga or PC 3d-accelerated demos or demos using only software rendering

_Nuskool: The Post-Modern Era {1997-} Computers PC and fast PC (Windows) + 3D cards Demos for consoles, Gameboy and mobile phones The retro attack of the Commodore 64 and other classic computers Demo Features and Styles 3D Demos and Engines Rule the Earth Acccelerated – non accelerated ’Music video demos’, movie and animation look-a-likes Typical Parties Thousands of participants Big City and Sport Arenas in Major Cities Major Party Brands reaching their 10th anniversary Well organized, sponsored and secured events More Gamers than ‘Demosceners’ Multiple big competitions with high prizes Alternative and Counter parties Status of the First Sceners Work, a wife and a family Own computer or ICT companies, new media Music Multi track songs with complex real-time effects and mixing Mp3 (= not real-time) soundtracks in demos Music is made with ’real audio tools’, not trackers Quality and styles are comparable to any commercial music Spreading and trading Internet The Big Question Mad Programming Skillz or Mad Design Stylez ”Should we make a dogma demo or a music video”

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greetz:

”Thanks for giving us all that inspiration, support, friendship, warez, parties and high quality releases during the years...”

Accession Ackerlight Alcatraz Alpha Flight Anarchy Andromeda Angels Bamiga Sector One Beastie Boys Beyond Force Bloodsuckers Brainstorm Budbrain Byterapers Inc. Cave Classic CNCD Complete Death Complex Crionics Crystal Crusaders Cryptoburners Damones Deathstar Defjam Dexion D-Mob DOC Doom Dragons Dreamdealers Dual Crew Eaglesoft Inc ECA Endless Piracy Exceed Exotic Men

Fairlight Farb-rausch Finnish Gold (FIG) Frantic Freedom Force Future Crew Gate High Quality Crackings Image Impact Inc. IT Kefrens Kewlers Legend Lemon Lightforce Magnetic Fields Mahoney & Kaktus Maturefurk Megaforce Melon Midnight Sun Morgue No Limits North Star Oracle Orange Paradox Parallax Paranoimia Phenomena Pure-Byte Pure Metal Coders Pygmy Projects Quartex Quicksilver Razor 1911 Rebels

Red Sector Inc. RHD Royal Amiga Force Sanity SAE SCA Scoopex Skid Row Slipstream Sonic/Sonik Clique Spaceballs Spreadpoint subway & dream team Supplex The Band The Kent Team The Powerslaves The Silents The Supply Team Titanics TOM SOFT TPOLM Triad Trilogy Tristar Twilight UNIT-A Unique Vectra Vertigo Virtual Dreams Vision Vision Factory Wizzcat World of Wonders Zenith Zero Defects X-Men

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Respect! Demo Screenshot and Picture Credits: Cover Art by Destop and Murk. Page 4: Codename Chinadoll by katastro.fi. Pages 7 and 8: Doomsday by Complex. Page 10: picture by Der Piipo. Page 11: photo by Petri Virtanen. Page 13: Crack intro by Skid Row. Page 16: Horizontal Cool by CNCD. Page 17: photo by Petri Virtanen. Page 18: picture by Fthr. Page 19: Chaosland by Virtual Dreams. Page 22: photo by Petri Virtanen. Page 23: Megablast by Orange. Page 24: Crime Minister of Europe by katastro.fi. Page 25: Horizontal Cool by CNCD. Page 26: Blur, Pure and Fad intros by Sonik Clique. Page 27: Red Eye by Sonik Clique. Pages 28 and 30: (above) Dozen by Komplex and (below) picture by Der Piipo. Page 31: Inside by CNCD. Page 34: photo by Oxide. Page 35: Effect from Fish and Chips #5 by Sonik Clique (TBA). Page 36: (above) Himmeli by Jukka ’Jugi’ Kaartinen and (below) photo by Oxide. Pages 3744: Logo and screenshots: Copyright Johan Kotlinski. Pages 47 and 48: photo by Per Kristiansen. Page 49: photo by The Gathering Info-Crew. Page 50: Dope by Complex. Page 52: photos by The Gathering Info-Crew. Page 54: The Gathering Logo: Copyright The Gathering. Pages 55 and 56: The Incredible IFS-system by Mikko Wilkman. For the demoscene exhibition’s credits c.f. the article. Page 69: Crime Minister of Europe by katastro.fi. See page 4 for other Credits. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner(s).