The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden

Mar 31, 2025 | ramblings

The demoscene has become a national UNESCO-heritage in Sweden, thanks to an application that Ziphoid and me did last year. This has already happened in several European countries, as part of the international Art of Coding initiative to make the demoscene a global UNESCO heritage. I think this makes plenty of sense, since the demoscene is arguably the oldest creative digital subculture around. It has largely stuck to its own values and traditions throughout the world's technological and economical shifts, and that sort of consistency is quite unusual in the digital world.

The main idea of the demoscene is to compete with productions that maximize a certain hardware, but that's not what all demosceners like to do. My demogroup Hack n' Trade for example, cares more about making weird stuff, and there are plenty of other groups like that. Some demosceners don't release anything at all, but might do important work to keep the scene alive (BBS-trading, organizing parties, preserving software...).

I've written plenty of papers and blog posts about the demoscene, and I've often felt a gap between the stuff I write as a researcher and my personal experience of the demoscene. There is certainly an international demoscene with big events and huge releases that can be described in general terms, but what has mattered more to me is the local scenes, the small parties and the people you hang out with. Meeting up with a bunch of friends and making weird computer stuff "for no reason, really" is a great setting. That's what I enjoy the most, in the end. For other sceners, it's different.

There is a sort of diversity in the scene that is difficult to capture and generalize. The Swedish coder with a well-paid programming job and a busy family life might consider the demoscene as an escape to his teenage years, while the LSD-munching raver from France who trades illegal warez on BBSs and makes weird pixel art considers the scene as a free culture without corporate or art world bullshit. There's room for both in the scene, because it is werdly conservative and open at the same time. And perhaps that is one of the reasons why it should be considered an intangible heritage.

Goodbye 2024

Dec 30, 2024 | ramblings

Well, that was a pretty crappy year for the world, wasn't it? My way of coping has mostly been to go try to focus on the good stuff, and dive deep into a few big projects (more about that at the end). But I did one little thing to comment on the world. Intro 107 is a tiny C64 textmode intro with a shitty cover of the Airwolf theme, released under a pseudonym. If it doesn't speak for itself, I can reveal that it's a sarcastic take on one of the world's ultra right-wing governments.

I've been doing loads of text graphics this year. It's the best way to relax, you should try it! You can use Moebius for straight up ASCII and ANSI, and lvllvl.com for anything more advanced (it's basically like Photoshop for text graphics). You can see all my text graphics stuff here, but here are a few highlights:

Bastard PETSCII with a customized font for this.

GIF for Textscape. Watch out, it's an NFT! Please don't kill me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ4mvgK88lM

One of several cracktros/installers by Razor 1911 that I did graphics for.

My graphics for 2.0 by HarleyLikesMusic, designed by Dubmood.

Music-wise, I've finished a new album that will be out next year, and I've done some other bits and bobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLUKHQMwi6A

This set was streamed at Lovebyte in February, with visuals by the Portuguese wizard ps. The music is a bit of everything, but focused on slower stuff, and there's plenty of unreleased stuff in there.

I've also made music for two art exhibitions by Tommi Musturi (aka Electric) - Deep Show and his contribution to SUPERBUBBLES. Both of these were were kind of eerie and hypnotic, like much of my music has been lately. Has Goto80 gone completely slow? Well, no! Cases in point from this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzweC3uJrik

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDwgfHIABk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jver1TjfZwI&ab_channel=WalnutBob

Me and PET.CORP went on a small tour, and we released a new video for Killer Piller, which runs in the browser. It won the wild compo at the Zoo'24 demoparty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBQCTmudHsg&ab_channel=PET.CORP

I co-authored an academic article a while back, that was finally published this year: Retro-mediation, Commodore 64, and Interoperational Devices. I did a brief presentation about the demoscene in Bucarest, and my talk 46 years of PETSCII in 21 minutes was streamed in November. Oh, and Ziphoid and me has probably managed to add the demoscene as a national intangible heritage in Sweden!

Finally, there are a few big projects that have kept me quite busy.

I've been continuing to work on a book about PETSCII-graphics, which might be finished next year. The research for that book has led me into numerous sub-projects, especially involving older PETSCII-graphics that are not well preserved. One of these sub-projects was to add or update old PETSCII material at text-mode.org to make things more searchable.

That work led me into more work on text-mode.org: posting new content, but also fixed a lot of things under the hood. I'm going through all the posts to fix images, info, links and tags. With some 4,000 posts it's taking quite a while...

I've also been busy with my most enormous project yet. It's an online archive/museum of music software, which currently holds some 1,500 programs for various platforms, times and places. I've been working on it for years, and it has changed direction many times over the years. Now the first goal is to get a searchable database online, which might happen next year if we're lucky... Get in touch if you are curious and want to be involved!

Finally, I've continued to work on a soundtrack and sound design for a game. It's been very cool to explore reactive music, rather than the linear composing I'm used to. The game will be revealed some time next year.

+++ATH