Logo from Future Crew, Second Reality, IBM PC demo, 1993.
In the early 1980s, dial-up bulletin boards hosted extensive libraries of pirated software and videogames. These titles were distritubed by software companies with copy protection in place, which was removed by savvy users, who would customarily add some digital graffiti to the software intro screen before sharing it with others. These intro screens grew into an early digital art form. “Intros were the computer nerd version of graffiti,” artist Cory Arcangel observed. Crews made an effort to introduce as much visual complexity and style as they could into a highly constrained medium.
Intros grew in popularity, and eventually crews began to use their visual vernacular to release standalone demos. Demos were often elaborate that were typically limited to tiny file sizes, like 4K, and sometimes written over the course of a short hackathon-style competitions. “Like intros, demos are real-time graphics-and-sound software presentations, but they exist solely to push a computer to its limits,” Arcangel noted. “They are a performative way for programmers and crews to flex their coding skills.”
Spaceballs, State of the Art, December 29, 1992. Demo for Amiga.
The demoscene is a distinct community that has been a frequent source of inspiration for Rhizome’s community.