Demoscene Research

An interview of some Grand Cru (a Finnish game company) employees with a demoscene background. One example more of how these two things are often presented together.

Added Zerstört Offenheit den Wettstreit? Über die subkulturellen Werte von Crackern, Hackern und Demoszenern (Hartmann 2012) to the German Section. Danke schön!

There’s a new batch of Pouet.net visualizations from Gloom, too: http://blog.subsquare.com/state-of-the-demoscene-1991-2012-new/

Hadn’t seen this before (Zine #14 online edition): http://zine.bitfellas.org/articlelist.php?zine=14

Added Jimmy Maher’s The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (2012), which is a recent addition to the MIT Press Platform Studies series. Both a nostalgic and useful read dealing with the hardware and software of one of the most innovative machines of the 1980s. One chapter is dedicated to the activities of the cracker and demoscenes.

The Bibliography page was reorganized a little, too. The most visible change is that now the publications are split to Finnish, English, German and others, since it didn’t make much sense to have a category called “English and other languages”.

It took long, but finally Patryk Wasiak’s article ‘Illegal Guys’ – A History of Digital Subcultures in Europe during the 1980s is in the bibliography.

Added The beauty of the byte: towards an aesthetic model of demoscene intros by Stijn Peeters. Seems to be a report written for a course.

Nick Montfort et al. finally published their book 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 dealing with creative programming. The starting point is an old Commodore BASIC hack that draws random labyrinth-like patterns. The book can be downloaded as a pdf or purchased from several online stores. See here for more.

It’s been a bit quiet here lately, but that’s about to change! Markku and Antti – as part of a group of researchers – were given some funding for next year for studying the history of computer-related subcultures. Some of the work will definitely focus on the demoscene, so stay tuned. Thanks fly to the Kone Foundation.

Added a link to Nick Montfort’s demoscene presentation Gamer vs. Scener, or, Scener Theory that he gave at the Nordic DiGRA 2012 conference.

Topi Kauppinen’s MA thesis Cult of Real-time Image – Understanding the Hardcore added to the Bibliography.