I’ve learnt about the demoscene from students: it’s a subculture of coders and artists who create computer graphics sequences that deliberately challenge the processing power of the computer, pushing to see what can be done, always demanding that the animation be generated from the algorithms as you watch it rather than ahead of time. The demoscene was connected with piracy and cracking of games in the eighties and early nineties, because crews of crackers would proudly present their cracked versions of games with a “demo” at the front of it that displayed the crew’s technical and aesthetic skill. Now the demoscene is often played out in big coding parties and no doubt in many, many other ways I know nothing about. The demoscene has affected graphics in modern games and in music videos hugely, both by pushing computing power and by the aesthetics of the work.

Now the first book about the Nordic demoscene has been published, Demoscene: The Art of Real-Time. The book’s available from Amazon, or for half the price from geekstuff.no.