demoscene

demoscene
 /dem'oh.seen/

   [also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily
   in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that
   when old-time {warez d00dz} cracked some piece of software they often
   added an advertisement in the beginning, usually containing colorful
   {display hack}s with greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene
   was born among people who decided building these display hacks is more
   interesting than hacking -- or anyway safer. Around 1990 there began
   to be very serious police pressure on cracking groups, including raids
   with SWAT teams crashing into bedrooms to confiscate computers.
   Whether in response to this or for esthetic reasons, crackers of that
   period began to build self-contained display hacks of considerable
   elaboration and beauty (within the culture such a hack is called a
   {demo}). As more of these {demogroup}s emerged, they started to have
   {compo}s at copying parties (see {copyparty}), which later evolved to
   standalone events (see {demoparty}). The demoscene has retained some
   traits from the {warez d00dz}, including their style of handles and
   group names and some of their jargon.

   Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of
   smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the like.
   Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a couple
   of years after that, they also started using Java.

   Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original
   platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out
   and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While
   deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the
   mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the
   commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceners frown at
   this, but the majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceners
   end up working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages
   are available at http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and
   http://www.scene.org/.