Austrian Demo Scene Report
"There is a demo scene in Austria?!"
Well, the Austrian PC demo scene may have been a bit dormant in the last years. There has never been a demo party in Austria, and not too many releases have appeared. However, there are, and have always been, some Austrian sceners. You might not have expected it, but as a matter of fact, some of the leading Amiga sceners are living in this country - for example, Antibyte, the coder of Scoopex. Many other Scoopex members also reside in Austria. When Amiga sceners began to move over to PC around 2000, so did Scoopex. Scoopex PC may be regarded as one of the currently most active PC demo groups in Austria. Another is the closely related Surprise!Productions (there are some people who are members of both groups), an
international demo group with a long tradition that was originally founded in Vienna. In the Tyrol, one of Austria's western provinces, there is Riot, and there are also smaller groups in towns such as Graz, Linz and Wels. One of the most promising new groups is Speckdrumm, led by Paralax, a coder from Upper Austria currently living and studying in Vienna. Moreover, some Austrian sceners are members of German demogroups, such as Farbrausch (elite, yeah!).
In the year 1999, or 2k-1, there was a first attempt at organizing an Austrian Scene Meeting - we reported about it in Hugi #16. The meeting took place on June 18th in Entropy's new flat in the 22nd district of Vienna. Actually this was not a purely Austrian scene meeting, but rather an Austro-Bavarian meeting, since about half of the guests, members of Kolor and Colorfast, had come from Bavaria, the big south-eastern federal state of Germany. As Austria and Bavaria are very close together, this didn't make a lot of difference though: Austrians and Bavarians speak very similar dialects, and some historians believe that most of them are descendants of the same old Germanic tribe, the Bayuvars. Austrians like Bavaria's capital city Munich very much because once every year in October there's the Oktoberfest in Munich where you can drink a lot of beer for a rather cheap price.
The next meeting was around 2000, and as there were so few attendants it was called "Tiny Austrian Scene Meeting", or short: "TASM." After that, there was a long time without any official IRL meetings. Of course Austrian sceners stayed in touch on IRC: Many of them were already chatting on IRCnet #coders.ger, one of the channels of the German demo scene (it first used to be the only one, and later the most popular one, but nowadays it appears to be neither
of those two possibilities), but an additional channel #scene.at was founded specific to the Austrian scene.
In the summer of 2002, some sceners visited Peci of Scoopex in his father's rural house on the countryside near Neulengbach, Lower Austria. It had always been Peci's dream to live in such a place, and it was quite an exciting experience walking up to the loft. There was a large garden, and we enjoyed the barbecue. Lostcluster of Scoopex had just married, and he brought his wife along. As Peci's wife was also there, she had little reason to feel lonely. Peci had got to know his wife at the university library of the Vienna University of Technology where he had studied computer science; she had been working there. So he not only obtained a degree but also a woman from university.
Again there was silence... until late summer 2004. Meanwhile a forum had been installed at the scene.at website hosted by members of the group Riot. It is one of two web-based discussion boards designed for, and used by, the Austrian scene: The other is located at scene.org. One day Paralax asked a thread about the idea of having a new meeting. And so TASM 2004 was arranged.
On September 16th, we met in an Irish pub in the 9th district of Vienna. The name of the pub was Billy's Bones, and it featured quite a resolute waitress ("You drink far too fast!" - This was directed at TMB, who managed to consume about ten bottles of beer in one hour). It was eight of us: Franky, Paralax, Peitschi (from Linz), TMB, Klesk, Lostcluster, Peci and me. Photos from the meeting can be found at Slengpung. As you might expect, it was great fun and full of weirdness. For example Lostcluster, whose wife is currently pregnant, tried to create a pentagram of a cucumber... TMB made some mess when looking for a socket for Paralax' notebook; the waitress' comment: "What the fuck have you done?" As a matter of fact TMB was so drunk that he literally fell asleep on the street afterwards, and Franky had to call a taxi to take him home. Anyway, people enjoyed it so much that they expressed the wish to organize another meeting soon, although it would not be an official TASM, as TASMs would be hosted only once in four years - tradition is tradition, ha ha.
A new section was added to scene.at, called "Stammtisch" (regulars' table), and just a month after TASM 2004, the first Austrian Scene Stammtisch was arranged - at a location called "Entro's pizza restaurant". As a matter of fact it was a restaurant in the same building where Entropy's flat was located. Again it was eight of us: Franky, Gree, Paralax, Entropy, TMB, Nuke, Obliviate, and me, of course.
It seems like there will be such meetings more often, which will certainly have a positive effect on the Austrian demo scene. It's good that most people live in Vienna or places not so far away from it so it's easily possible to arrange meetings. Nothing, neither WWW nor email nor IRC, can replace face-to-face communication.
Maybe we will even see a demo party take place in Austria one day?
Austrian Demo Sceners
Some portraits of a couple of the currently active demosceners in Austria:
Adok, member of Hugi Core & Royal Family: Well, I guess you know him. ;)
Antibyte, member of Scoopex: One of the most popular coders on Amiga worldwide. Some people consider him a Scene God.
Entropy: A coder, previously a member of Singularity (founded by himself) and Teklords, now a member of Farbrausch. In real life, he has recently joined Microsoft as
a consultant.
Franky, member of Farbrausch: A coder, who is especially known for sound coding for 4k intros. Together with Shiva he created void-3. In real life, he is running his own Internet development company develotec. Rumour has it that lately he has been very successful with women!
Gree: A 2D and 3D graphician who happens to be Franky's brother.
Lostcluster, member of Scoopex: A coder. He created the first PC productions of Scoopex. He is also working as a programmer in real life.
Nuke, member of S!P: A coder and organizer, both in the scene and IRL.
Paralax, member of Speckdrumm: He's also a coder and the organizer of Speckdrumm, and of a couple of Austrian scene meetings as well. ;) He is studying computer science. In his spare time, he visits Gothic bars.
Peci, member of Scoopex: A skilled coder and Master of computer science.
TMB, member of Scoopex, S!P, Damones: "The MegaBrain" was previously known as ReeBoK. He is one of the oldest sceners around that are still active, having started back in the 1980s. He is an organizer and many years ago he also used to run a BBS, the Shoebox.
Warhead: The organizer of TRSI is also living in Vienna.
Releases
In the past five years, the most popular and best releases from Austrian demo sceners for the PC have probably been the 4k intro void-3 (sound code by Franky, graphics code by Shiva) and the 64k intro fr-010: art (released by Farbrausch and Scoopex; the code was done by Entropy and Peci). Speckdrumm also released a couple of good demos, such as Suspeckt the Moles. Let's hope that there will soon be more great releases.
Conclusion
Austria is not only "Mozartkugeln, Lipizzaner und die Wiener Sängerknaben", Austria is also "Scoopex, Speckdrumm and Surprise!Productions". There are some active demo sceners in Austria. Let's see what they'll contribute to the scene in the future.