demoscene

NOWE MEDIA/AWANGARDAwykład, dyskusja

Umieszczając poza centrum. Media cyfrowe a literatura eksperymentalnadr Piotr Marecki (UJ, Ha!Art)

piątek, 26 maja 2017, g. 14:30, s. 3wstęp wolny

Media cyfrowe, które są dzisiaj dominujące w komunikacji społecznej, służą także jako narzędzia do różnych form ekspresji (literatura elektroniczna, sztuka mediów, gry, demoscena). Truizmem jest powiedzenie, że język angielski jest dominujący w mediach cyfrowych. Zarówno wszelkie badania, jak i dzieła kanoniczne funkcjonują w języku angielskim i to Zachód uważany jest jako dominujący w tej dyscyplinie. Ale z drugiej strony od kilku lat w obszarze mediów cyfrowych zaobserwować można nowe trendy, które zmierzają do odkrycia tego, co centrum znacząco nazywa „obrzeżami”. Szczególnie interesujące wydają się perspektywy i zjawiska, które zostały rozwijane bez wpływu i inspiracji centrum (na przykład kraje za Żelazną Kurtyną, Ameryka Łacińska czy kraje arabskie).

W trakcie wykładu zorganizowanego z okazji 100-lecia awangardy w Polsce omówione zostaną przede wszystkim współczesne eksperymenty literackie, które powstają pod wpływem mediów cyfrowych. Perspektywa lokalna (polska) zderzona zostanie z perspektywą centralną. Zaprezentowane zostaną nowe formy praktyk pisarskich: od używania algorytmów, poprzez wykorzystanie poetyki bazy danych, gatunki eksplorujące internet rzeczy czy eksperymenty z nieświadomością internetu. Przedstawione zostaną także strategie wytwarzania współczesnych eksperymentalnych dzieł literackich, które nierzadko powstają w kontekście akademii (np. w laboratoriach humanistycznych) i bliskie są projektom badawczym.

dr Piotr Marecki – kulturoznawca i redaktor, wydawca, producent i wytwórca utworów cyfrowych. Pracuje jako adiunkt w Instytucie Kultury Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Współtwórca i współszef Korporacji Ha!art. Postdok na Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2013-14), był także profesorem wizytującym w Media Archeology Lab na Uniwersytecie Colorado w Boulder (USA), na Uniwersytecie w Rochester (USA), Uniwersytecie w Bergen (Norwegia) oraz w Smolny College w Sankt Petersburgu (Rosja). Wspólnie z autorami i autorkami z kilku krajów opublikował ostatnio tomik literatury generatywnej 2X6 (Les Figues Press, Los Angeles 2016). Obecnie pracuje nad książką o gatunkach cyfrowych oraz monografią komputera ZX Spectrum (wspólnie z demoscenerami Yerzmyeyem i Hellbojem). W ramach projektu „Twórcze programowanie” realizowanego ze środków NPRH był inicjatorem i współtwórcą UBU lab na UJ. Mieszka w Krakowie.

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).

Piotr Marecki, Ph.D., from Jagiellonian University and the UBU Lab in Kraków, Poland, will speak on the popular 8-bit computer released in 1982 in the UK, the ZX Spectrum. The title of his talk,  “The ZX Spectrum Demoscene as Organized Anarchy,” argues that the ZX Spectrum platform is unique as compared to other 8-bit machines and can be seen as organized anarchy. The event is scheduled on Friday, September 1, from 12-1 p.m. in VMMC 211A on the campus of WSUV.

Its uniqueness lies, Marecki claims, in the reception of the platform by users on a scale which is incomparable to that of any other platform. The traditional way of using platforms (not only the 8-bit) is based on their consumption, or the use of the official equipment, as well as programing, delivered by the manufacturer. And although the stories about platforms such as the C-64 or Atari are no strangers to creative and bottom-up approaches, these are based on the creation of independent programs. Besides the ZX Spectrum, none of these platforms generated, on such scale and creative level, the same hardware systems or clones. This is related to the simplicity of the computer’s construction and the cheap cost of the accessories as well as the geopolitical conditions in the world in the period of the platform’s popularity, the 80s and 90s.

As an example of organized anarchy, the ZX Spectrum demoscene, the 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). This talk 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). Talk is based on the research project on ZX Spectrum platform runs by the UBU lab at the Jagiellonian University.

Digital media, which are today dominant in social communication, serve also different types of creative expression (video games, new media art, electronic literature, demoscene). It is trivial to say that digital media are dominated by the English language. Both most recognized theoretical texts as well as canonical works are in the English language. And it is the West that is treated as dominant in this area. However, only over the past few years have we seen a new trend emerging, one which aims to discover what has happened in areas that the center has meaningfully called the “end (s)”. Particularly interesting are the perspectives and phenomena that have developed without influence or inspiration from the center in question (for example, communist countries beyond the Iron Curtain or the non-Latin languages, like Arabic or Chinese).

There is no strong scientific recognition of the distinctiveness of the approach to digital media in eastern countries. Both a lack of access to hardware and legal software under communism, as well as exclusion of the peripheries after the transformation gave rise to a number of local phenomena as cloning hardware, creating independent software, and widespread creative programming. The best proof of this is the demoscene – an underground subculture which developed in Europe (also in Central and Eastern Europe), with no comparable phenomena in other areas of the world.

Presentation by Piotr Marecki of UBU lab at Jagellionian University, discussion of different lab models for e-lit and digital culture.

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)