There are bigger updates underway, but as a quick heads-up: the tracker paper originally published in Finnish in 2019 is now available in English too: http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/ajankohtaista/trackers-the-rise-bloom-and-later-developments-of-a-paradigm/. Also see the errata.
Hege Nordli’s scene-related PhD thesis, The Net Is Not Enough: Searching for the Female Hacker, has been hard to obtain for years, but now that problem is remedied. Markku spent a few hours scanning the book and got permission from Nordli to make the pdf available online (thanks!), so here you go: http://www.kameli.net/~marq/scenepub/nordli_hege/The_Net_Is_Not_Enough-ocr.pdf
As the fourth country, The Netherlands have added the demoscene on their national UNESCO chapter’s list of intangible cultural heritage. Congratulations on our behalf! Here’s some further info (in Dutch) for a start: https://www.immaterieelerfgoed.nl/nl/215e-bijschrijving-in-inventaris
One more success for the Art of Coding project: the Polish UNESCO application was just accepted! There’s not much info yet in English, but here’s the project page with the news. Congratulations to everybody who was involved with the Polish application and let’s see who’s next!
Following the Finnish success, the German national UNESCO application has just been accepted, meaning the scene is now officially recognized as intangible cultural heritage there too! Read more here: http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/2021/03/20/demoscene-accepted-as-unesco-cultural-heritage-in-germany/
A special issue of WiderScreen, edited by Julia Erdogan, Gleb and me, has just been published with the topic “Home Computer Cultures and Society Before the Internet Age”. We’ll add the individual articles to the bibliography a bit later, but already at this point I can reveal that there’s plenty to read for demoscene enthusiasts and researchers alike.
Just added my own Finnish journal article Trackerit: paradigman synty, kukoistus ja myöhemmät vaiheet (2019), which deals with the history and creators of tracker software, and the text art related paper titled PETSCII – A Character Set and a Creative Platform (Reunanen, Heikkinen & Carlsson 2019).
The Finnish application to get the demoscene recognized by the national Unesco chapter as intangible cultural heritage was accepted just this week. Congratz to everybody involved! The scene is the first branch of digital culture to appear on the list, and the Finnish application was also the first of the national applications to be approved. Read the official announcement here and more about the larger Art of Coding project here. We hope that this success motivates and helps other countries with their respective efforts – the next one we should be hearing about is the German one. Now it’s time to show your parents that you were right all along, and the hours you spent by the computer were officially recognized cultural heritage 🙂
As you’ve probably noticed, there is an ongoing attempt to get the demoscene recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Both Gleb and me have been participating in the national applications that need to be submitted first. See here for a news item on the German application, and here to see the Finnish one that was submitted just a few days ago.
Finally added two missing papers: Hodges 2018 and Desidério & Rossi 2008. Two interesting books came out recently, and we’re working on getting them read and added as well. The first one is Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy by Gavin Mueller and the other Gaming the Iron Curtain by Jaroslav Svelch.