What a demoparty? What is the demoscene?


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

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

In these days of smooth looking demos which sometimes have a sort of plotline, one must bear in mind the most important difference between say, a Pixar movie, and a demo: demos are rendered in realtime by the processor of the computer they are running on. Although sceners have been known to do films (there's a film competition at Assembly, one of the oldest demoparties for example) and design has come increasingly to the forefront as computers have become more powerful, demos are not films. There are technical as well as artistic goals involved when a group or an individual scener makes a demo (particularly in the case of 4K demos), and this is an important distinction to remember. Although modern Windows demos are executable files or ".exe"s that the user launches in the same way one would launch a program, although some of them make the sorts of demands on the processor and graphics cards that high-end games do, and in fact a sizeable number of participants in the demoscene, or "sceners" have ended up working in the computer games industry, a demo generally isn't interactive. There may be separate games competitions at some demoparties, however.

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


What is a demoparty?

Party place

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

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


Linkfarm

Descriptions of the demoscene


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



Demoscene resource sites


Related material



@party is a program of Boston Cyberarts .