If we define Internet as a wild ecosystem of hyperlinks that fosters a collective intelligence built up by e.g. swarms of anonymous users and protocols that do not discriminate between different content, the Internet seems to be dying. It’s atleast changing in serious ways. Why?

If your IP-address does something naughty like distributing content that copyright owners or publishers want money for, the ISPs are obliged to reveal the “identity” behind the IP-address if they are asked (e.g. Sweden), or shut down your Internet access (e.g. France) — without evidence or trials, as suggested by EU’s IPRED. And recently in Sweden, a small ISP was demanded (by law) to shut down the Pirate Bay or pay 50,000 euros, due to copyright infringement that happened somewhere in their cables. So ISPs are responsible for what flows through their cables. Hm. Hello censor! And according to a recent boingboing-article, this style is about to go global thanks to ACTA.

Even if it’s bad enough that IP-addresses (e.g whoever uses your wireless connection) are policed by ISPs (concerned more with profits/survival than politics), it is even more alarming when such procedures can be automatized. Youtube and its ContentID analyzes the audio of videos and pays a part of ad revenues to copyright holders/publishers. IFPI’s ISRC embeds copyright information into audio. Similar systems are likely to be demanded for open networks to satisfy those in line with 4 bloated music corporations, like with the re-launch of Napster. As my favourite doctor of copyriot says, copyright control is no longer focused on works but on regulating the tools/media.

And how does all this relate to chipmusic? Well, chipmusic culture as I know it grew out of the will to copy. Early 1980s cracktros used chipmusic ripped from games. 1990s Amiga demoscene lived the ruined dreams of hiphop and sampled whatever music they wanted in its own network culture using mod-files, BBSs and postal mail. In the 2000s there is keygen-music and online there is hundreds of thousands of (copyrighted) chip-songs nicely indexed, free for download in its original format, ready to deconstruct or remix. That situation won’t come again if corporate protocols and codes permeat chipmusic just because e.g. ISRC seemed like a convenient way of making a few MP3-bucks. And remember, Internet politics is not some obscure matter for a separate digital world. It is probably already in your pocket. Bzzzz!

I recently had the pleasure of getting a sneak peak on Daniel Botz’s doctoral dissertation on the demoscene, entitled “Hacker-Ästhetik” (to be published). I am struggling with reading German, but I’m quite impressed with the extensive research that has gone into it. It has some refreshing views on the history, aesthetics and materiality of the demoscene. Before I got a peak of the dissertation, I was e-mailing back and forth with Botz during the summer. I thought I’d publish some of it here to see if it can lead to some interesting discussions. I am currently bathing in theory for my thesis on chipmusic, and I have been using some ideas from here. I’ve probably upset the radical post-humanist Friedrich Kittler by studying soundchips as social constructions pre-encoded with musical conventions, rather than mere ontological facts. But the idea of inherent aesthetical potentials in materials is refreshingly anti-individualistic.

Choose your youtube Amiga oldschool demo soundtrack: dr.vector or lizardking or tip&firefox or diablo.

CHIPFLIP > I have recently tried to get into the “media materialism” of Kittler and the others. In combination with software studies, or platform studies, I think it forms a very nice contextualization of demoscene works as political aesthetics. As I am more of a musician than a programmer/technology-nerd, I tend to focus more on the musical aspects though. With my restricted knowledge in Kittler’s works, I have understood that he sometimes regards technology as apriori, as something default. I saw you mentioning Kittler in relation to demoscene restrictions. Is that more about the artificial restrictions (4k intros, etc) than the actual hardware restrictions, or..?

BOTZ > To me, Kittlers “media materialism” is one of the key concepts for demoscene aesthetics. It’s not only applicable to specific size or platform restrictions but also to the common law of the demoscene to use accessible, standard customary hardware. Basically, the classic media artist asks himself “What kind of technology would I need to realize my concept”, while the demoscener asks “What can I achieve with the hardware in my hands”, which is regarding technology as a priori. What I basically try to say in my thesis is that demos rely on the artistic materiality of computers. Their aesthetic values are not based on infinite digital flexibility, but on the physical restrictions of computer platforms. That’s why demoscene is not about an idealistic projection of future technology, but about the creative appropriation of present hardware. Thus, it overcomes the frustration of “media platonism”, as Kittler would probably say.

CHIPFLIP > Do you see any problems in focusing on the demoscene’s “bricolage” characteristics? I have grown a sort of love-hate relationship with this perspective. Demos indeed do “impossible” things, but I sometimes find myself ignoring that this is almost like an inherent human trait. We all want to do the best with what we have, you know? Demosceners are reliant on the medium, but so is everybody else. There is no unlimited medium. I think the reason why I am particularly interested in this, is that chip music is often described as political/subversive/novelty/hacking/etc when it’s usually a lot more
conformative than that. Hm, I guess in the end my question to you is – what other subcultures/art-forms do you think are similar to the demoscene?

BOTZ > You asked for an example, I would name Graffiti as a paradigm of how creative subcultures work. I know that the comparison Cracker Scene – Graffiti Scene is really worn out because of the superficial similiarities like leaving traces in public space under illegal circumstances. But in both cases, the aim is to gain freedom, which is to be reached by expanding barriers, sometimes legal restrictions (as you wrote: demoscene began with claiming the right to copy), but at the cost of building up self-set restrictions. For example Graffiti claims the right to paint virtually any wall, it’s the call for freedom of artistic expression in the urban spaces. But the Graffiti Scene itself is far from being anarchistic: There are several traditional styles anyone has to master before getting fame and there is a very complex hierarchy of writers, plus an aerosol can is a VERY restrictive artistic tool.

CHIPFLIP > I have come to understand “art” as being very dependent on (a relationship to) concepts and theory, while “craft” is valued more as technical skills and end results. Thus, I personally regard the demos in general as craftmanship, but as I understand what you wrote you see it somewhere inbetween. In your text, you say that in the demoscene the computer is an artistic material, not a tool. What other artistic practices would you compare this to? Why did you choose the term artistic material?

BOTZ > This is quite simple. Computers are mostly referred to as tools. A tool is used to produce or shape something which in the end exists independently from the tool it was created with. In some cases the product even negates the production process and the use of a computer. Otherwise, a demo cannot exist without its platform, since the definition as a demo assumes its real-time execution on a computer, making a demo not a PRODUCT but a STATE of the computer. Thus, it’s more consistent to think of the computer as a material which is being shaped by its operator, pushing every byte into place. If you take this further, it’s pretty easy to realise that the aesthetic parameters of a demo are heavily dependent on the used hardware platform.

In other words: A demo is not a free concept being realised by the aid of a computer. It’s about the artistic process of interacting with the available material, accepting its boundaries as essential stimuli for shaping the outcome. This concept of “artistic material” is retraceable to Aristotle’s Physics (causa materialis): A statue made of bronze is already included within the possibilities of the material bronze. I like this point a lot, because computer art is often being read as completely virtual and unlimited while a demo makes use of the resistance of a certain hardware platform to define its aesthetic standards. Thus, the demoscene revaluates (not only so-called “obsolete”) computers as artistic material. (Kittler Inside! ;-)

So for now I will try to adress your question about the scene as a kind of craft. The applicability of the this term to the production culture of demos is something I really racked my brain over several times. On the one hand, the appreciation of technical skills, the mastering of formal exercises and the references to artistic traditions has made this comparison very tempting. It is also often used in the attempt to divide “craft” from “art”, which is very common in art history. See for example the title of Shirley Shor’s Article “DEMOing: An Emerging Artform or Just Another Digital Craft?“:

In fact, I use the same distinction as you do, keeping in mind that it’s pure theory and it does not works that simple in real life. Plus, it only works for “western” culture since the 15th century, and it has been dynamised by the avantgardes of the 20th century, which means that performing yesterday’s art equals today’s craft. So, placing democoding somewhere between art and craft is not really something I would dare because both terms are very interdependant and judgmental. But there’s no doubt that the scene really behaves like a craft guild sometimes. I used the term “craftmanship” for the graphics scene, as there has been a long dispute about quality standards, like “pixel art should be judged by pixels skills alone”. I just don’t believe that strict opinions like that have any connection to forms of traditional craft. I think it’s a comprehension of form which serves to constitute the scene as a subculture. In other words, not the SCENE made the RULES, the RULES made the SCENE :)

CHIPFLIP > That’s really interesting. Yeah, I have recently tried to differentiate between demoscene-music and the chipmusic that is released on (net)labels, micromusic.net, 8bitcollective, etc. There are surprisingly few demosceners that release/perform their music elsewhere, which is a curious thing in itself. But also, there seems to be more focus on craft in the demoscene, than elsewhere. Demoscene chipmusic is more technical, while other chipmusic is more about the musical concept or form. Obviously this relates to what you are saying; demomusic rules on small filesize and maximalism. Related to this then, is also that demosceners tend to aim for new or spectacular results, whereas other chipmusicians can embrace the default sounds to a larger extent. Here it is often more important to make the Gameboy-reference clear – especially if you’re not using a Gameboy :D

BOTZ > That’s correct! German Author Ulf Poschardt wrote in his book “DJ Culture” about “Celebrating the means of production”, which claims that for example in hip hop or techno culture musical products are never presented as isolated works of art but constantly referring to their basis of creation. Also, I enjoyed recently reading your (chipflip-)comment on “Fanta in Space”. Insane chip hacking of the C-64 hardware to play an italo disco track is a very good example how demoscene craft works. I think, Fanta managed to pick a musical style pattern which can be instantly associated with demoscene music, some sort of tight lizardking-ish tracker-pop. It’s the same when Spacepigs introduced their Spacetracker on the IBM PC using the worn out first samples of the Amiga ST-01. It seems to me that inside the scene, technical innovations have to be tested by mastering canonical exercises before they can be used for artistic experiments.

There’s been another discussion at 8bc about what chipmusic is. It seems to me that there are more people talking about genre than technodeterminism compared to a few years ago. There are thoughts about what building blocks make it sound chip (Sound chip here means: proper chipstyle, sounding-like chipstyle, soundchip). That could be due to the new perspectives that come with non-techno-purism. If you don’t use soundchips and trackers you need to be aware about what you’re doing in order to make it sound chip. When you’re using soundchips and trackers, you don’t have to worry about those things. (form vs medium)

It is interesting, because the technodeterminst view has tended to build this defensive discourse during the 2000s. “If you make chipmusic that’s not coming from a soundchip, we don’t want you around here boy!”. In the 90s it was about filesize instead, because a lot (if not most) chipmusic in the 1990s was sample-based on Amiga or PC. But still, if we say that the Paula chip of the Amiga is a soundchip, it is possible to stick with the soundchip-determinst definition of chipmusic. (A bit like pretending that the Gameboy has a soundchip)

Anything made with the internal sounds of the Amiga then, is chipmusic, e.g. Amigacore, Osdorp Posse, Bruno. Which finally brings us to the reason of this post. Up Rough has posted mastered MP3-versions of four Amiga MOD-classics by Mortimer Twang (Lukas Nystrand): Agima Blues (515kb), All Times by Music (588kb), Burning Chrome (350kb), Moonmaster (390kb). Calling this chipmusic is a bit useless, because the music form is quite far from quantized geek bleep museek. This has more to do with hip hop, jazz, and drum n’ bass. If you put Mortimer’s music into a mix, you no longer have to put your brain into tracker-data-analysis-mode when you hear it. Just listen to the music. Sometimes music is just music, nowhaddayouknow.

The J. Arthur Keenes Band is a Canadian artist who has been lurking around in the outskirts of the chipmusic scene for a couple of years, without gaining the recognition I think he deserves. Maybe his new release Pamplemousse on the excellent Pause will change that. It is a great proof of the genre-breaching potentials of soundchips (pop, rock, reggae?) but Keenes also uses a wider array of instruments: Gameboy, vocals, guitar, organ, melodica, etc. It’s a juicy result that shows off strong skills for harmonies and arrangements. Chip pop at its best!

Oddly enough I found myself in a discussion about pamplemousse (the fruit) last weekend in Caen, France. I was told it was not a grape fruit, and not a blood orange. And now I understand. It is an MP3-release!

When everybody (sic) was talking about TV Death Squad, the 8 bit kidd (not to be mistaken by the 8 bit kidd) was putting other people’s songs on his Myspace. Judging from this 8bc-thread, it has been music by Shirobon, Uoki-Toki, Unicorn Kid, and Stalecupcakes. His first Myspace was deleted rather quickly, but he put another one up just as quickly. This one has been up for a month or so – and it seems it will stay online. Oh well.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from an anonymous person who had been chatting with him, to try and figure out why he did what he did. I rather enjoyed reading it, so I thought I would post it here aswell. My summary for the lazy: he’s had his own music plagiarized and now he wants to troll 8bc and pass the account to his friends that will keep on doing it. And now, enter chatlog!

[01:34:25] <me> yo
[01:36:56] <him> /b/tard?
[01:37:02] <me> no
[01:37:19] <me> I’m some guy from 8bc
[01:37:34] <him> yus?
[01:38:06] <me> well, the shitstorm over you quieted a bit, and I thought I’d ask you some questions
[01:38:15] <him> you guys are the easiest to troll, thanks for teh massive amounts of Lulz.
[01:38:31] <him> buttt, ask away.
[01:38:38] <me> that’s what I wanted to ask about actually
[01:39:00] <him> proceed my good sir.
[01:39:06] <me> well, I don’t understand how this is trolling
[01:39:24] <me> when I troll people, I get them worked up over nothing
[01:39:35] <me> make them look silly
[01:39:50] <me> but don’t give them an actual cause
[01:39:58] <him> ah yes, but obv troll is obv.
[01:39:59] <me> see what I mean?
[01:40:17] <me> was that your intention all along?
[01:40:35] <me> we’re trying to figure out why people keep nicking stuff from us
[01:41:11] <him> I did it for the lulz. which I’ve gotten plenty of. thank the 8bc for me.
[01:41:11] <me> I don’t get it, personaly
[01:41:35] <me> well, is there any need now to keep the tracks up?
[01:42:09] <me> you seem to have gone under the radar, so why keep them
[01:42:32] <me> doesn’t do much for trolling now
[01:43:16] <him> yes, i’m handing the myspace off for a fellow troll to have. just start using a friend adder to add 8bit artist and watch the shitstorm ensue.
[01:43:39] <me> hmm
[01:43:52] <me> you have another music project, *******, right?
[01:44:03] <him> indeed.
[01:44:14] <me> is that also a troll account?
[01:44:47] <him> haven’t messed with it since my good laptop got fucked up. and nah that’s a legit project
[01:45:22] <me> soooo, you wouldn’t mind if took those songs and put them up as my own, right? :P
[01:45:38] <him> they suck, go ahead. rofl
[01:45:46] <me> heh
[01:46:29] <me> well, I got an answer, but I’m not sure if I got an answer
[01:46:47] <him> I don’t follow.
[01:47:01] <me> I mean, I put hours, sometimes days and weeks into my tracks
[01:47:25] <me> you didn’t nick any of me, but it happened to me once
[01:48:02] <me> I think my conscience would kill me if I did anything like that
[01:48:16] <him> as do I with my music me and my friend produce which is why I stopped uploading it. the Internet is a fierce plays for competition which ussually leads to stealing
[01:48:32] <him> trolls don’t have a consciense.
[01:49:05] <me> yeah, but you’d hate it if anyone would troll you the same way, wouldn’t you?
[01:49:44] <me> I’m trying to figure out if it’s just like… I dunno, nicking pylons from the street or a calculated thing
[01:49:46] <him> I wouldn’t give the troll the satisfaction he craves.
[01:51:05] <me> well, what would you do? let him go on, and let him get praise (you got some good comments on your myspace) you know is yours by right?
[01:51:57] <me> I know from experience that feels really shitty
[01:52:05] <him> or  work to get it deleted and not just complain.
[01:52:37] <me> we got yours deleted, and you put up a new page within minutes.. doesn’t seem to work
[01:53:28] <him> I don’t give up that easy, launch an attack againt the personal, hack the aim. I gave you guys plenty of info to take me down so it was actually fair and nothing
[01:53:46] <him> shows how strong your community RLY is.
[01:54:09] <me> oh come on
[01:54:19] <me> that’s not what I’m getting at
[01:54:30] <him> then what are you getting at?
[01:54:39] <me> what I don’t get is how, as a musician yourself, you can punch an artist like that
[01:55:22] <him> like I said, for the lulz.
[01:55:55] <me> where’s the lulz in that? getting people angry isn’t very hard
[01:56:24] <him> ahah, obv.
[01:56:27] <me> is it because you know you can get away with it? I mean, nobody is likely going to file a lawsuit or something
[01:57:15] <me> would you pull that with the likes of, say, sabrepulse?
[01:57:52] <him> too easily detected, obv troll is obv.
[01:58:30] <me> well, you know his opinion on music theft, don’t you?
[01:59:15] <me> (and btw, shouldn’t be trolling be easily detected anyways?)
[01:59:44] <me> and shirobon isn’t a nobody either
[02:00:02] <him> if it’s obv you’re a troll people will disregard you. yeah but idgaf about that one haha
[02:00:25] <him> gotta have at least one people would recognize and investigate.
[02:00:44] <me> you dont give a fuck about sabrepulse’s opinion?
[..chipflip note: 4 minute delay..]
[02:04:02] <him> I’m not down for an ethics lesson good sir, I am done here.
[02:04:16] <me> well, fair enough
[02:04:27] <me> thanks for the answers, such as they are
[02:04:43] <him> least I could do.
[02:05:21] <him> goodluck on your music, I might consider taking down the page due to you confronting me in an actually respectable matter.
[02:05:45] <me> thank you for that, too
[02:06:07] <me> I feel that actually talking is often more effective than screaming
[02:06:47] <him> indeed.

After a few days I received another chat-log, and this time mr.Anonymous wanted to ask why he chose 8-bit music and not some other music.

[21:48:30] <me> hey, I forgot to ask you a question last time. may I?
[21:48:41] <him> Sure, why not?
[21:49:17] <me> well, I was wondering if there was any special reason you picked 8bit (as a style).
[21:49:50] <him> i personally love the 8bit musice, i’m actually waiting for a LSDJ i got off ebay to come in the mail.
[21:49:58] <me> oh
[21:50:05] <me> I didn’t expect that
[21:50:08] <him> once that gets here im handing off the page to my /b/ros so i can start on my music.
[21:50:32] <him> Expect the unexpected.
[21:50:44] <me> why would you pick a style of music for trolling you like and not… screamo or something?
[21:50:55] <him> I also enjoy screamo.
[21:51:01] <him> harder to troll though.
[21:51:01] <me> haha oops sorry
[21:51:13] <him> i enjoy pretty much all music, besides country and the sort.
[21:51:43] <him> i mainly listen to 8bit/chiptune and hardcore/grindcore music.
[21:52:08] <me> so why pick it as a target? isn’t that paradox?
[21:52:38] <him> A bit, but because i know alot about it and how easy it was to obtain and impersonate with the music, i chose it.
[21:52:52] <me> ah, I see
[21:53:19] <me> you put up a new track, I noticed
[21:53:50] <him> Indeed, a track i had on my ipod for awhile that i wanted for my personal page.
[21:55:04] <me> It’s ******** by ********. Hope to revive the troll-roll?
[21:55:39] <him> i don’t that sceney weenie will notice.
[21:55:52] <him> so it was more for personal use than that of trolling.
[21:56:02] <him> I enjoy his music, but not him.
[21:58:06] <me> thanks for the answers again
[21:58:14] <him> Anytime.
[21:58:23] <me> see ya

tlr made C64-demos in 1986 (!) and coded the Vic20-tracker VIC-tracker and Over5 for Amiga. Among other things, he now works with the VICE-emulators and it seems that he figured out a new trick with the oscillators of the 6560-chip inside Vic20. This music sounds cleaner and more perfected than other Vic20-music. Whereas other music uses the built-in 7-bit scale, which gives it the characteristic slightly-out-of-tune feeling, this uses 9-bit frequency resolution with fancy vibrato. The player also offers 6-bit pulse width modulation, and it all adds up sounding more like new Atari ST-music than Vic20, if it wasn’t for the noise-channel uses. Get mp3, prg, and info at this denial-forumpost.

Meanwhile, also in Stockholm, TBC has been developing a similar improvement of the frequency resolution for his new Vic20-game, which you can read about here. My favourite Vic20-soundhack is Viznut’s “speech synthesis” that take soundchip-hacking towards destabilizing aesthetics rather than perfection. Robotic Liberation gives me satisfaction.

A month ago the Ready > Run exhibition opened in Philadelphia, and will run until November 7th at the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery. It shows works from Enso, minusbaby, noteNdo, Nullsleep, VBLANK, Animal Style, MET-Lab, NO CARRIER, Paul Slocum, Dan and Winckler. From the site: “Chip musicians and pixel artists work within the limitations of these vintage technologies by hacking their childhood toys to generate complex new genres of music and visual art that challenge and reflect the identity of contemporary art on an international level.” The text thus places the works as operating within the ‘limits’ of material systems, but expanding symbolic systems through ‘complex new genres’. Is that really what the exhibition does…?

As noted before, chipmusic is usually accompanied by either glitch aesthetics or 8-bit craftmanship; what Heidegger would label bringing-forth and challening-forth respectively. Videogame hardware or software are obviously used, and maybe more often than some artists want to admit (me?!) the symbolics and aesthetics of videogames are also used. This exhibition shows all of these discourses.

Enso and minusbaby represent craftmanship with their good-looking printed pixel graphics.The NES musicdisk Teletype by Animal Style and No Carrier, operates in a similar domain. Animal style also exhibits a Gameboy connected to a home made amplifier. Paul Slocum displays his old work ‘Combat Rock’ where a cover of “Rock the Casbah” has been added to the Atari 2600-game Combat.

There are several works that combine videogames and interaction, with glitch aesthetics. In Data Spills, Nullsleep hacks a NES-game and makes it spill program logic into the representational layer, producing glitch artifacts. No Carrier presents his GlitchNES that you can control with a Power Pad and noteNdo works with hardware-glitches of the NES that can be controlled by intercepting lazer lights. VBLANK also creates glitch aesthetics when he transcodes the ROM of an Atari XE onto the screen, and enables joystick interaction.

These works go beyond the limitations of systems in several ways. There are physical interfaces that are not inherent to the systems. There are no NES-printers and therefore printed NES-graphics can only exist outside the system. There are unfortunately no lazer interfaces to the NES either, and it is possible that the hardware modifications by noteNdo produces effects and artifacts that are out-of-system-experiences; things that software and emulators can only (try to) dream of. The ideal glitches; those that cannot be reproduced or explained.

To me, it is highly relevant to think of what constitutes a system and, from that perspective, define limitations and possibilities. How is a system empowering and disempowering? Chipstyled works are described both as remaining within systems, and transgressing the limits of systems, which seems quite true. But it would be interesting to study more in-depth what a system really is, by studying the transgressive aswell as traditional uses. It is not only relevant for chipmusic; such platform-specific analyses could maybe say a thing or two about popular culture in general. All photos below taken by Marjorie Becker.

Animal Style: Juvenile Amplifier

NES Landscapes by enso

Reset v2.0 by noteNdo

Teletime by Animal Style and No Carrier

Just a reason for some self-promotion, or something else?

Lukas Nystrand: Ikioma Taide Cracktro

ZX Spectrum Orchestra: Look & Listen

Erik Nilsson & Goto80: Come Together (Skwee Beta Boink)

Diplo (currently on some sort of world tour) released “Diplo Rhyhtm” on Big Dada in 2004, using the music from the NES game Platoon, Kraftwerk, and vocals. I don’t know who composed the NES-song, but the C64-version was made by Jonathan Dunn.

Mashups are rarely done in style, and this is no exception. Enjoy!

The Norwegian composer Geir Tjelta has introduced a new trick for the SID-chip: realtime delay. The output of the third channel of the SID can be recorded, and by delaying the playback of the sample on the “virtual” fourth channel, you get a subtle echo. This routine doesn’t use much CPU-time either. A nice and elegant trick. Get the exe and mp3 here. It needs to run on the old 6581 chip, since this technique for playing samples relies on a bug that was almost fixed with the new 8580 chip.

Another modern way of making automatic echoes is Neil Baldwin’s routine for his new NES music editor, Nijuu. Instead of sampling sounds, it detects free spaces in the tracks and triggers notes with decreasing volumes. It uses more CPU but sounds  more obvious than Tjelta’s echoes. Listen to the MP3.

As a sidenote – Geir and Neil are both chipmusicians from the 1980s having recently returned with a boom. Geir also programs an editor together with GRG, Sid Duzz It, which according to the rumours will include this echo effect along with extensive MIDI support in the next version.

Edit Oct 01: Geir says it will not be included in the new SDI.