Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene (2018) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene (2018) [video]

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I'm the author of 03 of those ANSi art screens displayed on 20min50.

Here are the links to the full artworks: http://blocktronics.org/lu-glitch-ans/ http://blocktronics.org/luciano-spidertronics/ http://www.ansigarden.com/downloads/death-roses-bbs-theme/

These are awesome.

Does anybody know of a good library that can generate images (jpg, png etc.) from ANSI art files?

Thank you!

Yes. AnsiLove: https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove

Thanks!

One thing I really enjoy is the close brotherhood the ANSI scene has with the demoscene. I'm not quite sure how the venn diagram overlaps but there's all these really interesting underground computing art scenes and these ones are really close together.

I miss the demoscene. Even coded a couple of demos back in the day (unrelated to cracking, though.)

Some of the Farb Rausch stuff was phenomenal (http://farb-rausch.de/)

I sorta feel like some of the magic is gone now, though, because computers are so powerful. There's no graphical effect that you can't either do directly, or at least fake with sufficient realism that you can't really tell it's fake.

I'd say the "new" technical challenge for those so inclined is 64k demos and such.

Also there's still a lot of people who make demos for the old platforms, like the c64, Amiga, Gameboy...

Take a look on http://www.pouet.net/ if you are interested. Some demos have been recorded as video so you can watch them without the actual hardware.

Part of what makes art art is artificial constrain.

Some tools are capable of aiding us in generating (near) perfect visual replication, that doesn't mean we have to use them to their full potential.

Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi did some pieces in Excel https://mymodernmet.com/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-pa...

There's no reason you can't still make this kind of stuff for older systems. In fact, that's one reason I like homebrew software and ROM hacks for 8/16 bit titles, because they're fundamentally about trying to overcome limits imposed by decades old hardware in a world where computing power for modern games and programs is virtually infinite.

There are still quite a few people out there developing for these systems, and quite a few impressive demos and projects coming from them under said limitations.

besides old computers there is also arduino as a modern target with limited resources:

http://thedemoscene.tumblr.com/post/3750689725/gameduino-con...

I remember attending the first HOPE conference in 1994. Shocked, but understand, to see it is now $170 to attend (unless you hack admission?);)

I started in 1978 on a Commodore PET 2001 with a cassette drive to load and store programs, and using PEEK and POKE commands. I moved on to Amiga, PC, Macs running Minix, Linux and the usual suspects. You were always low-level then, and I loved creating tunes on my Vic-20 and Amiga 500. The demoscene came along and inspired me to push my 6502 and 286/386 assembly skills to squeeze as much as possible out of my system's resources. I never joined the demoscene, but only created at home back in the days of my old 300 baud modem (2400 baud modems were over $500).

I think this early wonder with low-level, and being crafty, is why I think I find myself attracted to languages (like forth, CToy, the TCC compiler, J, and even assembly) amongst the bloat of Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. However, I do like Zig/Rust for low-level. One-line C code to produce music from the command line? You bet; watch and listen to bisqwit. [1]

The demoscene produces some truly entrancing artwork, an acid trip manifested in pixels. I have great respect for the sole creators and creative teams alike that make such spectacles.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KLnN0GczI

@ 1:08:20

> "Yes that is a water melon"

:P wicked tunes though.

[EDIT]

I still can't get over just how good some of the music is in the old 80s/90s demos.

I enjoy the modern 140/512/1k/4k graphic code golfing sites but feel there is a serious hole for music here.

For a while I've been thinking that a sox-golf site might be fun (or dwitter.net for sox). Might be my next weekend project. Not quite music, but I've spent many hours just making weird random sounds in sox.

4k demos often have some pretty impressive music, a lot of them use soft synths designed specifically for use in 4k demos like https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos

Does it also play a huge part in the advancement of computer graphics in general? As I've often understood it, the demo scene people were usually some of the most talented in their field.

Not a huge part, at least not directly. Many sceners do work in the graphics industry (cgi, games, hw etc) but demos are mostly just a hobby for everyone. I feel like lots of stuff done in demos is not really practical for "real-world" use.

There is one interesting example of where demoscene has managed to break into more commercial world: https://www.notch.one/

Only a few Atari 8-bit people in the audience, but one thing that wasn't covered in his overview was ATASCII art - sometimes made with a program called a "Breakin' Generator". There are some online demos here: http://www.breakintochat.com/collections/atascii/

I miss Morph's Outpost and Kai Krause.

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