You are one of the driving forces behind a large demoscene exhibition project that is currently being developed. What is it going to be?

We are organising a DS Event in Vienna - exactly in Quartier21, the department of digital culture in the Museumsquartier, one of the better locations for contemporary art in Europe. It takes place from the 04th to the 20th of July 2008. The DS exhibition is just one part of the event and is freely accessible during the whole event period. It focuses on variety of DS productions for Amiga, C64, Atari and PC as well as on historical facts and cultural aspects of the DS community.




What special events do you plan for the time of the exhibition? Will it be the usual demo-shows?

Actually our project has already started. As a kind of warming up for the DS-Event08 we have established the Vienna Demoscene Meetings which take place in WerkzeugH regularly once a month. At these gatherings we invite demosceners to make a speech and show demos dedicated to certain topics such as: 'demos for different computer platforms'; '64k intros', 'cracktros' etc. The first meeting took place on the 20th of Sept07 and the demoshow was carried out byIq (RGBA) and Paralax (Speckdrumm) - Thanks! Navis (ASD) was our guest at DEMOSCENE MEETING0001 and he gave an introduction to the PC-demoscene. At DEMOSCENE MEETING0010, Gargaj (Conspiracy, mlut Design) talked about demos themselves and the motivation to join the demoscene.
WerkzeugH is a dedicated meeting place for people interested in digital culture in general. Not only every current or formerly active demoscener is invited to join these DS-meetings, but also people who are just generally interested to meet in a chilled atmosphere, drink beer and beam some demos on the wall. The next DEMOSCENE MEETING0011 is on the 17th of Jan 2008, and is about 64k intros and the competition aspect within the DS. Our guests are BoyC (Conspiracy) and if the time allows (cross your fingers!!!) Gizmo (Farbrausch). So if you are near Vienna, Austria, let us know and drop by. Further Dates: 17.01.08 | 15.02.08 | 13.03.08 | 10.04.08 | 16.05.08 | 19.06.08.
Back to the DS-Event08 in Vienna: the DS-Event is not just intended to inform people about the DS but it is mainly designed for ALL demosceners from ALL different platforms. Together with our partners from the international DS - such as Scene.org, Digitale Kultur e.V, Echtzeit, Hungarian Demoscene Association, Demoscene TV and many other sceners etc. - we do not just conceive a project that presents the DS like demosceners want to be perceived, but we want demosceners to participate in it, to contribute and to enjoy the whole Event. For this reason, we set up a special weekend program in a chilled atmosphere, parallel to the permanent exhibition, with ongoing discussion panels through which certain topics picked up from the DS are introduced to the audience and debated. Thus the DS is seen as part of the creative sector which takes a very unique role in-between commercial media production and media art scene. Representatives from all three areas are invited to discuss these topics from their point of view. We have launched a Wiki page that also contains a collection of suggested topics that could be discussed through the Event. This Wikiprovides you with further information about the project, informs you about the schedule and special items of the program such as storytelling etc. but is mainly set up as a working space for the international DS. You are very welcome to register and add your comments and ideas. And of course you are ALL invited to join the DS Event in July 2008 as mere visitors or even as DJ, story-teller, to speak in a discussion panel,.. We would love to see the MQ full of sceners.




All this does not sound like a project you could organize on your own. Who else is involved?

As mentioned before, the whole project is actually a DS project, and many demosceners are involved in. However, there is the core team in Vienna consisting of 9 members who are gathered in the association [d]vision. Besides 3 Austrian demosceners Paralax, Snowcrash, and Warhead, there are Alex, Rip, Tom, Momo, Nora and me who are working on the site. Most of them have already attended demoparties and simply got the spark to set up this project. It's a great, hard working and motivated team putting much effort into realising this Event and we have a lot of fun in doing so. One of our latest successes was that our DS project was officially chosen as a worth-to-be-supported project three weeks ago and is financially supported by the City of Vienna. You will get to know some of the [d]vision members at TUM07. Furthermore [d]vision has already involved the demoscene in one of its previous projects called Electronic Kindergarten. [d]vision can be seen as a kind of Austrian Demoscene Association.



Now, we know what you plan to do. Who is the head behind all this? Who are you? What is your personal motivation for investing so much time into such a project? How did you discover the demoscene?

Actually there are many heads behind this project. The idea of organizing a DS exhibition is not a new one. Several lucky coincidences gave us the opportunity to get a fantastic location to realise this idea in Vienna. One of these was that I got in contact with a journalist, who did a radio broadcast about Breakpoint06 and is also in the orga-teamof international RESFEST Vienna. He asked to make a DS contribution within RESFEST 10 | Vienna06 which was carried out by Paralax, Adok, Snowcrash, Tom, Momo and me. Afterwards, the Concept and Artistic Director of Quartier 21 - MQ approached us with the proposal to organize a two-week exhibition about the DS in 2008. If you get this chance you need good reasons for not taking it, since several DS attempts to organise a DS exhibition failed because of a lack of available exhibition space. My personal reasons for setting up this DS Event are maybe similar to those of other people who are involved into DS. I simply love demos and I am overwhelmed by the atmosphere within the scene. Actually I was always searching for surroundings where creativity and innovation flourishes, a thing I could not see at universities and within the art scene. For this reason I was really interested in fields where a strange mixture of new technique, science and art is allowed to occur. A friend of mine, who is involved in computer stuff and has attended several parties, showed me the first demos in 2000. In 2005 I shared a flat with 2 demosceners who told me more about DS history and introduced me to Scene.org, Pouet, OJuice / Nectarine, Slengpung etc. Being aware about this, I decided to integrate DS as a topic into my MSc thesis and attended the next upcoming demoparty, which was Assembly05. There I got to know many demosceners - those people I appreciated so much for what they are doing - which was really special to me, and I had a really great time. I for myself gain so much from the scene by getting to know really great people from all over the world who share their scene experiences with me etc. So I just have this feeling of giving something back and to support what's going on there. I am not a coder, graphician or musician but I have skills in organizing things - so...

Many visitors of various demoparties throughout 2007 probably saw your big screen slide stating "ds rox". Is this the work title? What statement does the title of the exhibition make?

We had a screen slide at Breakpoint07 announcing the work title of the project - demoscene r000xx MQ - MQ stands for Museumsquartier. At this party we gathered some guys from Digitale Kultur e.V, Echtzeit, Hungarian Demoscene Association, from the Atari scene, etc. to introduce our project idea, the philosophy of doing a DS-Project together and asked for participation. Back in Vienna we established [d]vision and faced certain problems with MQ to fix the date of the event. However we finally succeeded and got more and more supporters from the DS and further opportunitiesin Vienna so that we actually changed our working title to demoscene r000xx Vienna. And we would love to see more working titles popping up such as demoscene r000xx Budapest, demoscene r000xx Helsinki, demoscene r000xx...

Why do you think the demoscene needs such a public exhibition? Is it going to be something elitist, artsy, something just for doctors of art? Could you tell our readers about the target audience of the exhibition?

It's difficult to say the demoscene needs something. Actually the problem already starts in saying THE demoscene because within the scene a variety of ideas exists about what the DS is. It doesn't just gather people who do stuff on different computer platforms but also different generations of demosceners, from the swapper to the BBS era, up to times where most of the diskmags have disappeared and are replaced mainly by internet platforms. All of them have experienced DS in a different way, and depending on the time / technological improvements THE demoscene is changing. However as you can see the DS Event in Vienna is carried out in strong cooperation with demosceners and set up for ALL demosceners - active and formerly active, old- and newschoolers on all computer platforms. Besides all these fantastic parties out there, the DS-Event in Vienna is another possibility of meeting up and spending a good time together.
Additionally the DS-Event in Vienna is also an opportunity to make other people aware of the great things which were and are still done within the DS. It's somehow strange that demosceners had / have such a big impact on digital (and therewith on contemporary) culture and just a few even know about the existence of the scene. Even many computer professionals are not aware about it. Thus, we simply think those DS people really deserve to be recognised, but in a way as they want to be perceived.
Further we are quite sure there are young people out there who would like to get in touch with the DS. In Vienna a lot of cool stuff is going on in digital culture (e.g. Metalab - one of our local project partners) and several people are generally interested into computers. Maybe some of them might get the spark and start becoming active which is just possible if they are aware about the existence of the scene. We don't share the fear that this DS-Event coulddestroy the DS spirit. You need a certain kind of mentality to travel from party to party accompanied by your computer and your sleeping bag, to spend 3 days in a party hall or half a year in front of your computer creating a kickass demo.
As you can see, we don't intent to set up an "elitist, artsy something just for doctors" but an Event for demosceners and all other people interested in computers and computer culture. So don't hesitate getting in contact with us!!!

When we first met at Assembly, some years ago, you were working on documentation about the demoscene. A paper that would at the same time be your final thesis for your studies. What do you study?

What is going on with this paper? I am also a PhD student of Sociology at Vienna University, doing my dissertation on the demoscene. In this context I did more than 30 narrative interviews with demosceners - coders, musicians, graphicians who were / are active in different periods on different computer platforms, as well as with party organizers, diskmag editors etc. All the interviews are transcribed and now I am at the stage of data analyzing which requires a certain level of concentration and a lot of time. Besides my job, I am involved in several other projects and since I don't like to do things by half-measure, I interrupted my dissertation project for a while. I am planning to resume by April 2008. The paper about the demoscene will be released for sure - it's just a matter of time.

Gina, thank you very much for this informative and interesting interview!
Links:
[d]vision - www.dvision.at