demos

So while I've been swapping CDs and running through Debian installs on a variety of (slightly dated) hardware tonight I've been staying entertained by watching side two of Mind Candy, a DVD of video captures of old PC demos. Rather a nice idea to use video capture, since many of these demos can't be run anymore on modern machines.

It's hard to do the DVD justice in a single blog entry but here's my personal take on it. As a non-European who wasn't too in touch back in the early 90's, I missed out on the whole demo scene thing, but did see one or two. The only one I really remember is, predictably, Second Reality, which at the time was very impressive and I remember watching it several times with friends. Looking back on it now, I have to admit it seems less impressive. Instead I did quite enjoy another slightly later demo on this DVD, 303 by Acme.

But at this point most of the stuff in old demos like these is nothing one hasn't seen before, and I can only take so much electronic music at once, so I was glad to switch over to the commentary track. I really enjoyed that because of all the interesting historical notes and some very intense commentary by some of the creators of the demos.

The best thing I've taken away from this is just a general impression of what it was like back then for a bunch of folks in a group, probably in Europe, to get together somewhere for a couple of days and stay up all night working together on a project together, and hopefully end the meeting with something special. Which when you get right down to it, sounds kinda familiar..