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Monthly Archives: October 2007

Three Fantastic PC Demos Considered as Art

26-Oct-07

One of my interests is in emerging art forms. Various kinds of new media have the potential to be the greatest vehicles of artistic expression we have yet seen. I consider gaming to be one such platform – and have explored the art of gaming narrative previously on this blog (and will do so again shortly). Another emerging art form is the demo – which garners considerably less attention because of it lacks a mass appeal. While the demo scene has been around for a considerable amount of time (it grew up around c64 gaming scene where those providing cracks and trainers would preface the game with a short loading screen which would attribute to themselves the credit for the crack), it is yet to fully mature as an art form. Nevertheless, I believe its potential can be seen in recent work by some of the top demo crews on the scene today. This post is a review of three examples of such work. While many will refuse the label of ‘art’ for such work, I will nevertheless consider them as such and provide my review on such a basis.