Sometimes the demoscene feels like a bunch of engineers that do crafts rather than arts. Sometimes it doesn’t. The danish/french Amiga group Melon Dezign are usually credited for bringing graphic design into the demoscene. Their demos were called ‘design demos’. I just came up with a third category of demos: ’emo demo’. It is a bit of a joke to use that word, just to make it boringly clear. But anything goes if it rhymes. So here are three emo demos made in Norway.
(EDIT: hm, these images are extremely boring!? the demos are better..)
Creators & The Dreams – Brief Bursts of Happiness (C64, 2004) Short and grey demo with nicely animated graphics, mini-glitches, and a very interesting soundtrack, uncomfy style. It is almost all done by Mermaid, who is one of very few that codes, pixels, and composes for C64, Vic20, Amiga, NES, MSX, and more. What makes it even more rare, is that Mermaid is female.
Panoramic Designs – Mentallic (C64, 1992) Longer and bluer demo from one of my favourite groups because their style is psychedelic but not hippie, dark but not goth, experimental but not farty. It’s emo demos! In this demo there are a lot of scroll texts which was obligatory in 1992. It might not be an instant pleasure for everyone, but do check out more of their stuff (Psykolog and Parapsykolog for example).
Kjell Nordbo – Larger than life (C64, 2005) Already mentioned here before, this is probably the creepiest demoscene production ever. ‘The ultimate freedom you get only when you die!’ It seems a bit tricky to get it to work in some emulators (attaching a cartridge sometimes does the trick). Torrent with MP3s here.
CHIPFLIP 
November 2, 2008 at 7:17 pm |
Larger than life truly has an amazing collection of songs! Kjell Nordbo was great!
Thanks for sharing the others, I had not seen any of them before :)
November 3, 2008 at 4:38 pm |
Interesting, seeing you use the word Emo-demo aswell. Personally i have the name Hollowman strongly attached to that term :)
Mentallic could be seen like an excerpt from their lives, where Mermaid and Hollowman’s work feel more like a well-considered conceptual demo.
Perhaps there is a difference between being conceptually emo and being authentically emo.
But indeed, Mentallic is an emo-demo aswell in retrospect. (though mostly by the scrolltexts)
November 3, 2008 at 4:44 pm |
Yes, hollowman is of course the master! For some reason I wanted to keep it norwegian here though. Maybe Hollowman could become norwegian some day.
But emodemo is actually a term that people use? I didn’t know. I forgot to mention ‘concept demos’ aswell, which is the same thing sometimes. Also, I was thinking that this says something about what a ‘normal’ demo is. They are not about emotions or concepts. :)
November 3, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
Yup man, like My Beauty released in X’2008, where you participated :)
I agree, Hollowman is the master of this type of demos.
I would approve the usage of a term like “conceptual demo” or such pretentious bullshit, since these are pieces that could belong to an art exhib (I would like to try at doing one :)). But I like them, so I wouldn’t put that name. Oh my, what a dilemma!
Are there some of these for other platforms besides C64? I kind of remember Heaven Seven by Exceed on the PC being a bit of an emodemo… then again a lot of the demos on the Amiga had that “poetry” stuff, like in Haujobb demos… Would those be emodemos too? I think what is cool is that “Content” or “concept” thing is not new to the demoscene, but these C64 guys like Hollowman have managed to give them a better context to display them. Certainly a 7 big ball routine or a plasma or DYCP doesn’t have shit to do with this content, so you have to face the demo another way.
You should add to the list hello:FRIEND, one of, if not my favourite.
What was the name of the FLT one with the zombies? I think you made music on it too, but I can’t remember the name and as such, I can’t find it.
November 3, 2008 at 6:55 pm |
I think emo demo is a bad term in many ways just like concept demo or design demo (anyone up for the challenge of doing a demo that has NO design and NO concept? hehe). But I think it is kind of relevant aswell.
Anyway, I am sure there are emo demos for other platforms. A somewhat strange example is Robotic Liberation by PWP ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8 ). It is a vic20 demo that really gives me the feeling of instability, and something almost broken. But it doesn’t really fit into what I think an emo demo is (though I am not sure what that is). The Swedish group Replay did some demos ten years ago that I would call emo, because of the poetry stuff. There must be loads more …
And outside of the demoscene it is a different story to me, where digital art has always been more about concept and emotions than the tech-maximisation that still rules the demoscene. At the end of the day, that is the biggest difference between art and demos to me (although now I am prepared to dodge bullets).
the FLT-demo is called Wok Zombie and I didn’t make the music for that one.
November 5, 2008 at 7:58 pm |
Huhumm… ööööhhh.. Hmm… Öööööh… :)
November 11, 2008 at 2:41 pm |
Thanks, I was also looking for Robotic Liberation and couldn’t remember the name.
I think the ‘definition’ for these demos would just be a monicker to differentiate them from others. We all know what we are talking about here, because all these demos share a common characteristic. Putting a name to these things is OK in my book, it’s like a mnemonic to quickly reference what I mean without falling into deep descriptions.
May 20, 2010 at 3:56 pm |
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