A beautiful discovery

by Tomas Pereira, Animation Theater Producer at SIGGRAPH 2007 and Producer / Graphics Research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, California


I came to the Demoscene quite by accident. As the Producer for the SIGGRAPH Animation Theaters I was looking to find an underrepresented group in the community that I could show to the theater goers. I wanted a group that had something to say but which had little - or no - representation at the conference. One day a friend of mine from Berlin were sending me a message and she was telling me about the Janne Suni rip-off by Tim the bland, I mean Timbaland. I didn't really know what she was talking about. So I immediately went to my trusty Google page and typed in "Demoscene."

When I saw what was being created by the people in the scene, I was really amazed that something so incredibly cool was totally hidden from the mainstream graphics community. As a musician and producer I couldn't believe the production quality that came from such "simple" procedural content, not to mention how cool it looked. It was like I had entered a secret place that nobody knew about other than the ones who created it, and me, the uninvited guest.

I was completely taken in by the stunning work that was created within the confines of the hardware and software the artists chose to create with, and I decided that I needed to have this work in the Animation Theater. I browsed through Scene.org and that led me to Axel in the end, since Axel approached Paul Debevec at pretty much the same time regarding an interview for ZINE. I immediately contacted him to ask if he would submit anything to the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. He was very happy to ask individual demoscene groups if they would submit to the CAF.

That as they say is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I've come to be a fan of the work of the Demoscene and the people who create it. I look forward to introducing them to the attendees at the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival.