Presenting Demos to the World

After years of hiding in the underground, there is finally an initiative to get demos recognized by academic circles by bringing them to Siggraph.

Personally, I'm in favour of this. In the course of several years, demos have developed to a high level, and it's about time that not only demosceners and young people get to see them, but that they're also recognized by these who assess what's "high culture" and what isn't. Good demos and size-limited intros are examples of sophisticated programming and painting/composing skills, they aren't easy to create, and it's about time that these achievements get some real attention, not only by game companies because they're interested in the demoscene because they want to hire qualified employees, but because of the demos themselves. Because they're hardcoded, because they (at least many of them) have artistic messages, and because they're a symbol of what can be done using the new multimedia technologies.

I'm also interested in a real assessment of demos - that demos get assessed by outsiders who have vast enough knowledge about art or technology, like university professors of the related subjects (e.g. computer graphics processing).

It's clear that demos themselves are not subject to science, as they are merely using methods devised by science; most of the demo-effects used today were already explained in books such as Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice a decade ago. But I am really curious what the reactions of people working in these areas of science - that is digital image processing, sound engineering, physics and mathematics - will be like, whether they will think that demos are what their name means, good demonstrations of these methods. And I'm really interested what art experts will think of the artistic value of demos.

Let's find out what our place in the history of computing will be.

Adok/Hugi - 05 Mar 2001