This document discusses the demoscene, which is an international community of programmers, artists, and musicians who create audio-visual presentations in real-time using computers. It covers the history and origins of the demoscene in the 1980s, how crackers would modify games and share them, and the social networks that developed. It also discusses whether demos should be considered an art form and their influence on art, games, and culture.

1. GDCV1845/GDSS1845 – Videogames and arts
Class 05
Art Game
Game Art

2. Class 04
Schedule
Art History
Demoscene
Art game
Game art
Game proposal continued

3. Dada
Chance must be recognized as a new stimulus
to artistic creation.
Dada

4. Dada
Dadaism (1916-1924)
Post first world war cultural movement in visual arts,
literature, theatre and graphic design.

5. Dadaism
Anti-art, non-art movement by artists
The works were characterized by a deliberate
irrationality and the rejection of any prevailing
standards of art.
They believed in nonsense.

6. Dadaism
Dadaists created art in which chance and
randomness formed the basis of creation.
The “law of chance” can be experienced only
in a total surrender to unconscious.
Hans Arp

7. Hans Arp

8. Dada typography

9. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

10. Portrait of chess players, Marcel Duchamp, 1911

11. Portrait of chess players, Marcel Duchamp, 1911

12. Reunion, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, 1968

13. Reunion, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, 1968, recreated 2010

14. George Maciunas

15. Fluxus Kits

16. Nam June Paik, Participation TV

17. Demoscene
Demoscene

18. Demoscene: the Art of Real-time

19. Sceen magazine

20. Demoscene
The demoscene is an international collective of
programmers, graphics artists and musicians
who create real-time audio-visual
presentations with home computers.
Rhizome.org

21. Commodore 64

22. Commodore Amiga

23. Tape player

24. Game cassette

25. Piracy
Crackers dug up the part of program code that
contained the copy protection and disable it.
The altered program was saved, copied and
distributed among friends.

26. Piracy
The original motive was not money. It was
about testing one’s skills and overcoming a
challenge.
It was also a chance to gain credibility with
their peer group.

27. Cracker’s intro

28. Cracker’s intro
Signature
Logo
Animated text
Computer graphics
Background music

29. Cracker
Modify the games
Insert short-cuts that made playing easier
Increase the demand for new games
Fix bugs that developers had neglected
Anti-game experience

30. Suppliers
The ones who bought the game for cracking.
They can also be game developers
themselves.

31. Swappers
The ones who represent a cracking team and
possess contact lists of crackers all over the
world, and trade cracked games within the
network.
Cracks may release before the formal
publication date of the game.

32. Demos
The cracker’s intros are now circulated without
the original games. The content of concern is
now the intro, not the cracked game.

33. Approaches
It can be studied as an artistic activity.
It can also be approached as counter-culture,
hacker activity or participatory media.
Rhizome.org

34. Demo
In computer industries, a demo is a simple
prototype shows off what a computer system
can do.
In demoscene, a demo is a series of computer
graphic effects with a music soundtrack.

35. Demo

36. Demo

37. Animation
Demos are different from animations in a way
that they have to be generated real-time in the
computers where the original games play.
Animations can be prepared beforehand.

38. Interactivity
In a demo, the user is just a viewer. We are
talking about a kind of ‘interpassive’ work,
which could, as far as technology goes,
contain interactive elements, but the choice not
to include them has been made.

39. Performance
Demos are more like theatre performances
than movies, videos or animations.
“It’s all happening here and now”
Programmer’s art

40. Demoscene

41. Demoscene

42. Social
Making demos offered kids who may have
been quiet, liked math and computers and
were perhaps looked down upon by others a
chance to shine.

43. Social networks
The people criticizing the kids for their
antisocial pastimes had no understanding of
the elaborate social networks connected to the
demo scene.

44. Postal network

45. Zines culture – diskmag

46. Bulletin board system for demoscene

47. Internet
The whole demo scene moved on to the
Internet…
Many old skool crackers and swappers feel
that this is when the underground values and
spirit of honorable competition disappeared.

48. Is demo art?

49. Is demo art?

50. Is demo art?
Avoided any attempts to attach what they do to
any existing artistic paradigm…
The technological challenge, competing with
your peers, plays a central role in developing
their own forms of expression.
The aim is to outdo others.

51. Influence
Demos were influenced by the aesthetics of
sci-fi, heavy metal record covers, MTV,
advertisements, fantasy and pornography.

52. Is demo digital graffiti?

53. Demoscene in art context
Encouragement and criticism from one’s peers
and respected members of the community is a
lot more important than widespread fame in
artistic world.

54. Demoscene in art context
Commenting on society via technology and
software just by engaging in the act of
producing demos.
The people who make demos are not so much
wandering conceptual artists, but the master
clock-smiths of real-time digital media art.

55. Demoscene in art context

56. Game and art
A videogame “artist” is not the one who creates
a videogame, but someone who “copies” it.
A videogame “artist’ doesn’t even play a
videogame but he just extracts stuff from it.

57. Artgames
A term used by independent game developer –
Jason Rohrer
Games created with artistic intentions to
expand the expressive possibilities of games,
to create revealing and reflective play
experience…

58. Artgames – Braid, Jonathan Blow

59. Game art
Game art is art made of games.
Games are a means of questioning, critiquing,
and exploring unexpected potentials…

60. Game art – Mario Trilogy. Myfanwy Ashmore

61. Columbine High School, 1999

62. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

63. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

64. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

65. Invader

66. Invader

67. Game and code
A new, powerful form of Pop Art
Artists can actually create videogames or
modify the software of existing games.
To protest against its ideology; or to
deconstruct its interface, revealing the
structure and conventions it is based on…

68. Brody Condon

69. Brody Condon

70. Anne-Marie Schleiner – Velvet Strike

71. Realism in game
Interactivity or photo-realism

72. JODI – SOD, Wolfenstein 3D

73. Palle Torsson – Evil Interior, Unreal Tournament

74. Feng Mengbo