The Bug is a browser demo presented as a single page of HTML, with CSS, JavaScript, and a Base64 encoded image all part of that one page. It is a trilingual digital poem, with sound, that computationally glitches itself in different ways, transforming the background image, the text, and the music.
“Polska przydrożna” ("Roadside Poland") is an anti-racer designed for the 8-bit Atari, immersed in demoscene aesthetics and the general climate of retro games. The program references the book "Polska przydrożna" by Piotr Marecki (Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2020), which describes a road trip along Polish side roads. Instead of straightforward travelling, the protagonist of the book wriggles around small towns (these locations are listed in the form of a text scroll). The demo itself is devoid of elements characteristic of racers (car, speed, movement, attractive landscapes), thus the work testifies to the pandemic time in which it was made (sports matches without spectators, universities without students, peopleless tourist destinations). The chiptune composed by Caruso refers to Polish disco-polo folk music (designed on Raster Music Tracker). The demo is programmed using MADS assembler. Demo made by Gorgh (code), Maro (idea), Caruso (msx), Kaz (gfx), 2020.
“Polska przydrożna” to zanurzony w estetyce demoscenowej i klimacie retro gier anty-racer zrealizowany na 8-bitowym Atari. Program nawiązuje do książki “Polska przydrożna” Piotra Mareckiego (Wydawnictwo Czarne), która opisuje road trip przez Polskę bocznymi drogami. Bohater książki nie tyle jedzie, co wierci się po niewielkich miejscowościach (miejscowości te wymieniane są w formie tekstowego scrolla). Samo demo pozbawione jest wszystkich elementów charakterystycznych dla racerów (samochód, prędkość, ruch, atrakcyjne krajobrazy), przez co utwór opowiada o czasach pandemii, w jakich został zrealizowany (mecze bez widzów, uniwersytety bez studentów i studentek, pustki w miejscach turystycznych). Chiptune skomponowany przez Caruso nawiązuje do polskiej ludowej muzyki disco-polo. Utwór został zaprogramowany w MADS assembler.
Crazy demo by UBU lab members.
For the month of August, the Media Archaeology Lab has been honored indeed to host Professor Piotr Marecki (from the the Institute of Culture at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and lecturer at the Film School in Łódź, Poland) and Yerzmyey, a lo-fi artist, demoscener, musician, graphic artist, photographer, and writer also from Krakow, Poland.
To celebrate their visit, they will present a 90-minute demoshow of their work in the MAL on original ZX Spectrum Machines as well as local clones such as Timex, Speccy 2010, Zx-Uno, and the ZX Vega console.
More information below – again, please come and/or spread the word!
When: 4:30pm Thursday August 18thWhere: Media Archaeology Lab, 1320 Grandview Avenue, lower levelWhat: ZX Spectrum Scene Poetry Collection
This project is demoscene and ZX Spectrum oriented. What is the demoscene? This phenomenon is apparent to those with advanced understanding of digital media. In the book Freax. The Brief History of Computer Demoscene it is stated that “almost all modern art genres have an underground stream that can not be found anywhere, or bought in shops, and only insiders know of its existence.” Adjectives such as illegal, grassroots, independent and DIY aesthetics are often related with this field and practice. The term itself is derived from the word “demonstration” and refers to the demonstration of the capabilities of a platform and the skills of a programmer. A basic understanding of the demoscene will treat it as “a subculture in the computer underground culture universe, dealing with the creative and constructive side of technology” (Demoscene FAQ). The demoscene, as a phenomenon developed from the 80s mainly in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, was created as a response to the lack of legal access to hardware and software. The demoscene is composed of demosceners, that is – as they define themselves ironically – “a bunch of boozing computer nerds, programming weird, useless multimedia stuff” (Demoscene FAQ). This phenomenon comes directly from the “cracker” community, namely traders and distributors of illegal software, who by copying games and other programs left behind their signature on them (in effect, a satisfied customer had to go back for more merchandise). In the field of digital media demosceners have unique knowledge of the platform, as well as the languages of the program. During organized parties by sceners, demosceners (by using nicknames) are always affiliated with a platform, for example ZX Spectrum, C-64, Commodore Amiga and PC (just as some academics are affiliated with various institutions in which they work and with which they identify). In the world of digital media this is the only such community in which the platform fills such an important role in terms of identification. The demoscene is in other words art generated in real time. The genres created by demosceners are demos and intros, or pieces of music and graphics that have no purpose other than to amaze the audience (usually also well versed in a given platform or programing language). It is worth to emphisazie that demoscene gathers programmes involed wit programming for fun. Our project focuses on one particular demoscene platform, the ZX Spectrum, which was popular mainly in Europe (despite attempts, the platform was never popularized in the United States). The aim of the research project is to put in context the phenomenon of ZX Spectrum scene poetry. Demosceners themself don’t call themself artists, they mostly treat their creative activity as a hobby. Many demos are treated as a kind of video clip, hence the demoscene was usually contextualized as a phenomenon from the field of digital media and audiovisual art. There exist several demos of which an integral part is constituted by text and poetry, and we want to distinguish those demos which we can call scene poetry. During our reasearch project such a collection of ZX Spectrum demos will be built. This project takes into account and affirms the local perspective, different from the dominant one (ZX Spectrum as platform and demoscene as form of activity are very local). So our collection consists of creative works not only in English, but also in Russian, Polish and Czech. This is also a project built at the intersection between a few fields in creative computing (eg. electronic literature, electronic music, demoscene).
On January 12th, 2017 there were 113983 files on Piotr Marecki's laptop. This digital work is an attempt to lift them one by one – which takes several minutes. The work was first presented as a wild demo during the Synchrony/Recursion demoparty (NYC–Montreal, 27th–29th January 2017) and was not voted last in the competition.
Sound: SOYT!NBG
Robbo. Walkthrough is a hybrid piece in a form of text generator, as well as an analogue book. The text itself is generated on the 8-bit Atari computer, and has premiered as a wild demo on the demoscene party Silly Venture 2k17 in Gdańsk. The piece has been programmed in Pascal by Wojciech Bociański (known in the Atari scene as Bocianu) with soundtrack by Lisu (created in Raster Music Tracker.) The concept and text has been created by Piotr Marecki.
The first part of the title is an allusion to the game Robbo (1989,) a cult Polish production for the 8-bit Atari, while the second part references walkthrough, i.e. the text providing clues of how to finish a game, a popular genre in the digital media fiel,. However, Robbo is a literary (or rather: nonsensical) rendition of a walkthrough. The work is 56 minutes long, and constitutes an attempt to create digital ambient literature.
The analogue book itself has also been created in a rather unusual way. The text generated on the 8-bit Atari computer has been transcribed on the editor, and then assembled using Calamus, a program created in 1987 for use in the Atari ST/TT work environment. All of the elements of the work – text, music, code, composition, as well as graphics – have been created by the Atari enthusiasts, premiered on the Atari-themed party and are being distributed among the retro computers enthusiasts.
While Robbo generator can be regarded simply as an entertainment or a joke, its authors believe that it also describes how the short-lived technologies are often replaced by so-called killer apps. An answer for this kind of technological acceleration is the practice of returning to the discarded and dead media or technologies (in this case the Atari computer) which can provide a critical commentary to this acceleration, at the same time preserving the cultural content in the excess-based contemporaneity, its circulation and repractice.
(Source: Author's Description)
The demoscene is a European subculture that gathers computer programmers, who generate computer art in real time, the origins of which date back to the 80s. The most important genre created by the scene are demos – programs of which the sole aim is to impress the audience and demonstrate the abilities of the computer and the programmer. The demos are created in real time during demoparties, their effects are generated by a processor processing input data according to the created algorithm. The demoscene and its works are examples of pioneer creative computing in the field of digital media, at the intersection of computer science, media art and underground subculture. The aim of this paper is to attempt a description of the literary esthetic of the demoscene in scene genres such as demos, real-time texts, interactive fiction or zines. Special attention will devoted to the analysis of these genres in from the perspective of camp, pastiche, trash, bad taste. The point of departure will be the activity of the group Hooy-Program, and one of its members, the demoscener Yerzmyey, the author of various works, including the work of interactive fiction The Road to Assland. The group is treated as characteristic of the general phenomenon. Demoscene creators, programmers, and computer geeks are both artists and programmers, who can appreciate the aesthetics of the programs written for demos and who are aware of the possibilities and limitations of the platforms they use. Platform studies methodology shall be applied to the study of the achievements of Yerzmyey, a scener working with the ZX Spectrum 48 and 128 from 1989, in order to enable focus on the material, formal and historical aspects of programming and language. Media archeology focusing on the textual aspect of the demoscene may be an important discovery for researchers of the beginnings of digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.
(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)
The old-school demo based on scroll-text, which moves up and down the screen. Fifth Demo is a kind of short story about the author’s imaginary struggles with the computer and his attempts to rein it in, as illustrated by the strange behavior of the scroll, allegedly caused by the computer. (source: ELO 2015 catalog)
