Demoscene Research

Added Motivating digital fabrication processes – learning from the demoscene by Nicolai Brodersen Hansen, a short position paper from last year.

The museum of technology in Warsaw is apparently running a demoscene-themed exhibition as we speak. Find out more here: http://retronavigator.com/post/141494252848/do-you-know-we-have-history-of-damoscene

Cogent Arts & Humanities will publish a special issue on the 1980s’ videogames and they even mention the demoscene as one possible topic. See here: http://explore.cogentoa.com/call-for-special-issues/video-games-and-the-1980s-call-for-papers

With a slight delay, we included into our bibliography the special issue (#47/2014) of the Polish cultural magazine Ha!art dedicated to the demoscene. It features 96 pages of materials related to the history and the present state of the scene, including interviews with Yerzmyey, Nick Montfort, and Val Grimm, a feature on the Amiga demoscene with recollections by Polish sceners, and several essays on historical, philosophical, technical and aesthetical aspects. A detailed rundown of the contents can be consulted in our bibliography. The issue is out of print by now, but can be read online. We are indebted to Argasek for providing us with a paper copy.

One more on this topic by Jørgensen, Sandqvist & Sotamaa who have been writing on it before, too. Just added From hobbyists to entrepreneurs: On the formation of the Nordic game industry to the bibliography.

Assembly (Summer) 2015 main demo competition was broadcast yesterday by the Finnish broadcasting company, Yle. The program can still be accessed through their online service, Yle Areena. Featuring your Demoscene Research representative Markku quickly at the beginning, too 🙂

Ars Technica just published a lengthy series of articles on the Amiga to celebrate its 30th anniversary. One chapter is dedicated to the demoscene. See here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/the-amiga-turns-30-nobody-had-ever-designed-a-personal-computer-this-way/

Bent “Gloom” Stamnes has again updated his statistics on demoscene productions. See the blog post here: http://blog.subsquare.com/state-of-the-demoscene-1991-2014/

Added Amiga ASCII -taide, Heikki Lotvonen’s BA thesis which was recently accepted at the Aalto University. The thesis is in Finnish and deals with Amiga ASCII art – the author has also made some nice works himself as the production part.

We just added a detailed abstract of Brendan Ratliff’s MA thesis on tracked demoscene music. The author, known to demosceners as “Syphus”, produced an extraordinarily well-written introduction into tracked music, its history and technologies, its specific correlation with demoscene ethics, and its survival in the age of MP3. While originally defended in 2007, it was put online by the author only recently. We highly recommend it as a sound and enjoyable introduction into the subject. You can find the abstract, alongside with a link to the PDF version, in our bibliography.