“Moleman2 – Demoscene – The Art of the Algorithms”

2012/10/30

I just did Japanese subtitle for the Documentary movie called “Moleman 2 – Demoscene – The Art of the Algorithms” 🙂 It’s a documentary series called “Moleman” made by Hungarian filmmakers, and for their second release they chose demoscene, not-so-known computer sub-culture, as a theme. This 90min movie will answer most of your “what is demoscene?” questions.

I strongly believe that it’s so much quick and better to watch this movie than my explanation, but to avoid giving wrong impression to people who hears the word ‘demoscene’ for the first time (like I did, I first imagined that it’s a political demonstration with computer), let me try introducing this super roughly.

Demo looks similar to Electronica type of music video (like this or this). But what is different from those music video is that Demo only consist of computer programs (meaning, no photo or video is used to create). Moreover, there’s file size limitations for demo such as “less than 1MB”, “64KB” or “4KB” etc. Generally speaking, who think it’s possible to create music video type of work with only 4KB? Now a photo taken with iPhone is over 1.5MB! …Yet in this wide world, there are some people who prove it’s possible.

Here’s an example. This music video is made by genius Michel Gondry, he went to Iceland to shot these scenes and add some CG and Bjork in the view. Probably cost quite a lot.

Here, this is 4KB Demo made by RGBA+TBC for fun. Everything (like music and visuals) is packed in the 4KB file, and it’s all generated from programs, not loading photos.

What’s going on there? Well, go check with your eyes.

You can watch this entire film on YouTube with various languages! (or you can download from Moleman’s website)

Interview with the director, Szilárd Matusik can be read here.