Demoscene Research

For the last ten months or so I’ve been working on a special issue of the WiderScreen journal with Tero “Dr. TerrorZ” Heikkinen. Finally it’s out and there’s plenty of demo-related content as well: Daniel Botz’s article on scrollers and Gleb’s piece on the role of text art in the demo and cracker scenes, just to mention two. Check it out at http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2017-1-2/. The individual articles will find their way to the bibliography sooner or later.

Doreen Hartmann’s doctoral dissertation has now been edited into a book form and goes by the name Digital Art Natives: Praktiken, Artefakte und Strukturen der Computer-Demoszene. It can be purchased online here and here. In addition there’s a website with further content.

Ksenia Tatarchenko from the University of Geneva has written a nice report on the subcultures symposium held in Zürich, Switzerland in March. Read it here: http://www.infoclio.ch/de/home-computer-subcultures-and-society-internet-age-0

An international workshop on the history of early home computer subcultures and their place in society will take place 24-25 March 2017 in Zurich, Switzerland. It is organised by two of our editors, Gleb J. Albert and Markku Reunanen, as well as Julia Erdogan, who researches the history of hacking in Germany. Speakers will include Patryk Wasiak, Nick Montfort, Kevin Driscoll, and many more. On the evening of the 24th, there will be a screening of the new scene documentary “The 8-Bit Philosophy 2: The Good and the Bad Guys” by Konstantin Stürz. See http://tinyurl.com/hcsubconf for info and program, and http://tinyurl.com/hcsubposter for the poster.

The defense went well, so now it’s finally time to publish the full version of the thesis for your enjoyment (and add it to the bibliography too). Here goes: Times of Change in the Demoscene: A Creative Community and Its Relationship with Technology. I’ll let you know when the printed version becomes available on the university webshop, although it’ll be just a few copies.

Markku’s thesis, Times of Change in the Demoscene: A Creative Community and Its Relationship with Technology, is finally done and he’ll defend it in Pori, Finland on February 17. If you happen to be around, do come and see it. Below a couple of links with more details:

• Media Lab Helsinki news, in English
• The official press release, in Finnish

The thesis is available online here, and if the defense goes fine, we’ll make the full version available on Demoscene Reseach – the university version does not contain the articles for copyright reasons or something.

Added David Chmelik’s demoscene introduction from 2014. Sorry for the recent lack of updates, but I have a thesis to finish here 🙂

Anders Carlsson pointed us to I/O Symposium, which is looking for contributions (papers, panels and creative works). Their colorful list of possible topics the demoscene, chip music and piracy, so this might be another opportunity for you.

Daniel Botz let us know that there’s a new German demo documentary by Gravitation Art available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8_NqsrnH70.

I will be co-editing WiderScreen issue 1/2017 with Tero Heikkinen. The topic for the thematic issue is text art, naturally including PETSCII, ANSI and ASCII. I’m hoping that this would be an opportunity for demo researchers, since the scene, too, produces different kinds of text art. See here for more info and the deadlines: http://widerscreen.fi/call-for-papers/