Welcome to the Interview with Demosceners! This time, we welcome noby from Epoch and Prismbeings (and many other projects).
As an all-arounder and a newer generation of demoscener (meaning “not growing up with Amiga/C64”), noby’s title varies from musician, coder, designer to director. And probably after reading this interview, we might want to add “thinker” (and “collector”) to this long list. 🙂
In this interview conducted via chat, noby explained about how their solo work has started, pros and cons of solo/collaborative works, and why we should re-evaluate the definition of “direction” in demoscene.
We also talked about the inspiration, emotion, current AI trend and more! Grab a comfy chair and your favorite drink, and enjoy reading!
Note: If you don’t know what demoscene is, you may want to start from here!
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First of all, could you please introduce yourself briefly? Your name, the groups you belong to, and your roles?
In demoscene for the most part I use the handle ‘noby’. I’ve been part of various groups over the years, but the two primary ones I’ve made most of my worthwhile contributions in are Epoch and Prismbeings, the latter of which is my own solo-group mainly for size-limited productions. In addition, I’m part of groups such as Macau Exports and Empathy, as well as some secret ones that I intend to keep that way! I’m not however a member of Ekspert—as some have speculated over years—nor have I contributed to any of their productions in any material way.
As far as roles go, I don’t strictly think in those terms. I guess most appropriately I’m a ‘coder’ and a ‘musician’, but I don’t really think of myself as a coder though, because it’s not something I really like that much. I don’t enjoy programming for the sake of it, or at least rarely do. It’s more just sort of “means to an end” to me, a tool I can use to create something visual.
I think working on demos these days (or maybe since the beginning?) requires a high degree of interdisciplinarity in practice, which makes such role categorizations unhelpful. Really, I mostly just do whatever is needed to get a demo done!
Prismbeings is your solo work, so basically you need to take care of everything! How did this project start?
I didn’t initially set out to do everything by myself, in particular because for a long time I didn’t feel capable of handling the entire process alone. Eventually though I found myself able to work on productions entirely independently with full creative control.
Zetsubo by Prismbeings (2018) 4K intro
You’ve experienced both collaborative and solo projects, what’s the advantage and disadvantage of each?
I might become a bit controlling when trying to collaborate with others. Also, when I feel strongly motivated to contribute to a project, I will have the urge to contribute the creative decisions as well. Depending on who I’m working with and how controlling they on the other hand are, this can be a problem and lead to bad working relationship and a compromised, lacklustre end result. Obviously working alone with full creative control, you can bypass all of these problems.
But I also never had any issues working on Epoch demos with Simo and Dysposin and the others either, so it really depends on how compatible the personalities are within a team. With Simo especially I think we complemented each other well both in creative and technical sense, which made working together fun.
So, it gets tough when multiple people try to get the wheel… but working solo can also be hard sometimes?
I don’t think there’s anything particularly hard about doing everything by yourself, other than the fact that you obviously need to wear all the hats yourself, and carry the responsibility of finishing it all alone. But the liberating feeling of being fully in control is to me at least far more thrilling than the feeling of responsibility. It’s still fun to work in collaboration too though, but to me that requires quite a different mode of thought.
Hmm. I guess you got to be a bit of control freak to turn an idea into reality…
Speaking of direction, I read your essay. You further explored about the definition of “direction” in demoscene. When did you realize the importance of direction? Was there any specific moment?
The thing to note is that direction—in the sense that I think it’s useful as a concept—is as a process far less concrete than the Demoscene often makes it out to be. Whereas the Demoscene still tends to liken it to fancy camera movements and tight editing, aspects like that to me are not intrinsically “direction”. Instead, a well-directed demo is one that is cohesive, carries a purpose and communicates that purpose well. Secondary characteristics like good camera work and editing along with countless other less obvious aspects are just possible consequences good direction. The key instead is to rather focus on a layer deeper than just the superficial stylistic outcomes.
For those directions, where do you get the inspiration? Watching movies maybe?
I don’t really take inspiration for the directing process from anywhere specific. I understand directing visual media as rather analogous to speaking and understanding a language, so I can’t really give a direct answer. Let me try to elaborate. One doesn’t consciously take inspiration from anywhere to speak a language, but instead they just apply all of the patterns and conventions they’ve observed, combining and adapting them as needed to arrive at the desired result. The only difference is that in the case of directing you have the freedom to construct your own language on the spot, using it to communicate your intent to the prospective audience.
Of course, there are certain conventions and techniques—sometimes even references to specific sources—that I borrow and allude to in my work, but most of the time I simply work through intuition and feeling. Learning how to direct is first and foremost about observing existing work, and reflecting on how specific choices make you feel. The result of my style of directing is simply the reflection and sum total of my relationship with existing media from throughout my life.
Well then, let me approach this from different way. Maybe you can take some photos? I’d like to see what surrounds you! In the meantime, do you have any recommendations to grasp what the direction is?
If I had to recommend something specific—and I know these are maybe a bit obvious and a cliché at this point—I think being familiar with the Kuleshov effect and understanding the concepts of Eisenstein’s montage theory are essential foundations for the more concrete side of editing. They still have limited applicability in the context of making demos, but have nevertheless been helpful to me in practice on multiple occasions.
Glimpse of noby’s inspiration 1
(photo provided by noby)
Thank you! Now let me go back to where it all started. When and how did you discover demoscene?
I guess you could say that I got acquainted with the Demoscene slowly over time. I started making tracker music in 2004 when someone on a Finnish web forum recommended them for making music (not to me specifically, but in general). For context I would’ve been about 11 years old at the time. It just immediately clicked with me, and I started both making my own modules, as well as listening to ones others had made.
You just played around with those tools like new toys?
I definitely didn’t think like “ok, today I’m gonna start making music” and looked up a list with comparisons of all the best tools available for my PC. It was just something I tried on a whim, and it stuck, to this day.
I honestly didn’t have that much motivation because learning programming felt like such a monumental task, and I really couldn’t even figure out where to begin. That changed in 2011 though, when I entered university and went into Computer Science (or “Software Engineering”, whatever might be the most appropriate descriptor). I still had no real prior programming experience before that, but school gave me appropriate rigor and support to get myself off the ground, and eventually bit by bit start learning graphics programming a couple years later around 2013.
As I started to get the hang of it more and more on my own though, I immediately started to gravitate towards wanting to make my own productions as well; I finally felt like I could actually make a demo of my own.
The honest truth is that in many cases the inception for my productions has simply been that I wanted to force myself to make something for a party that I was planning to visit, whatever it may be. Beyond that though I rarely start the actual process with anything specific. There does need to be some spark of inspiration, but that spark can be just about anything; a piece of code I have lying around, some neat effect, a piece of music, a track of my own that I feel is worthwhile, some image someone else has made, or any combination of the above.
What about storyboard? Do you write them up beforehand?
Storyboards are not something I’ve ever used actually. I just never have time for them, and I rather just want to prototype the final look as early as possible and immediately work within it. I feel they are more just a necessity when working with certain kinds of productions that involve huge amounts of people with complex dependencies on one another, strict schedule, and lots of invested monetary capital. The teams involved in making demos are small enough that such complexity shouldn’t ever arise to necessitate them, and obviously even less so when working just alone. Also, with storyboard, it’s very easy to be over zealous early on, and then end up disappointed later when you realize you’re unable to realize the dreams you initially envisioned. This is not a bad thing in and of itself necessarily though, but it’s just not for me.
I feel the strongest productions, both mine and others’, usually start off with a piece of music as a source of inspiration though, or at least start working the content around the music as early as possible. Demoscene visuals tend to be comparatively different from what we’re used to seeing in other media (although this gap seems to be closing as time goes on) so it can be difficult communicate your intent just through them, especially since demos rarely feature any human characters, let alone ones that actually express emotions. Music instead provides by far the strongest emotional groundwork since most of us are exposed to music in all sorts of contexts on a daily basis, and because of that we know intuitively how to emotionally respond to it. And I’m not talking about just the audience, but also you the creator; if you understand what your soundtrack communicates, it’s likely that the audience will as well, and tying other aspects of your production to it as early as possible helps to ensure this connection. But when I say emotion, I just don’t mean what are often referred to as “story demos” or something like that, but in the broadest sense possible. Ultimately what we seek when making demos is to elicit some sort of a response from the audience, that’s the sort of emotion I’m talking about.
Waillee by Prismbeings (2017) 4K intro
Come to think of it, I remember some of the demos by how I felt watching them… (pause) Okay, let me ask you next question before I fully go into the look back mode 🙂 Do you do anything particular while making demo/music? Like always in the certain place, time or clothes? Listening to music, or drinking beers?
Extra by Epoch (2017) PC demo
Ah, that’s how things are… It’s great to know though, because I was kind of worried that it might mess up the compos. Okay, time to shoot this classic question. Your favorite demo, memorable demo, demo that changed your life… anything. Tell us a demo(s) which is special to you.
These are all very distinct categories to me, but I’ll try to approach each of them from different angles.
Demos that change my life definitely include ones like “Lifeforce” and “Crystal Dream II” that I already mentioned; those were instrumental in sparking my original interest in the scene. Although I wouldn’t count either one as any kind of a favorite anymore these days. I do still appreciate them in their own right of course.
Memorable demos I guess include ones like “Rove” by Farbrausch (video) and “Agenda Circling Forth” by Fairlight (video), which were the very final productions ever presented at the last edition of Breakpoint party in 2010. I was still quite new to the scene with barely any productions under my belt, but I remember observing how tumultuous and uncertain those times were. For the PC demo compo to go out on such a bang felt reassuring and and hopeful in that moment. I was of course watching these only via the stream. Later that year I ended up attending my first “real” demoparty, Stream 2010 for a day with a couple friends. This was a completely different experience as I had only been to Assembly before that. In particular “MF Real” by Kewlers (video) felt absolutely unreal to see live, and in particular the memory of actually seeing it in the compo is extremely vivid.
Those are mostly kind of obvious examples though. As far as favorite demos go however, I have this handy page that covers those, but that list is a bit too unwieldy to start elaborating in full! Below is a trimmed subset of the full list, just a handful of ones I vibe with the most at the moment. In no particular order except by release year.
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Glimpse of noby’s inspiration 3 (photo provided by noby) |
It’s hard to pinpoint why I’m so attached to the scene. After all, I’ve been interested and involved with the Demoscene since some of my formative years, hence I can’t reliably tell apart whether I fell in love because of its qualities, or whether the subculture itself invisibly shaped me into loving it. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle though, and it certainly has to be at least in part the former.
One of the aspects that attracted me to it—not necessarily with me being fully aware of it immediately—was the non-commercial aspect of it. Of course, demoparty events themselves are to large extent commercial, relying in paying by visitors and sponsors, but beyond that the participation itself, the act of creating, is not tied to any outside commercial pressure with fiscal stakeholders depending on your effort, being judged based on commercial potential or profits.
So much of the creative field—increasingly nowadays as the creator economy becomes more and more woven into the socio-economic fabric—has that looming, sinister aura starting at your neck, requiring you to evaluate the commercial viability of your ventures, encouraging you to think of ways how to monetize your creations, to make you think of marketing and social media presence. The Demoscene is not concerned with any of it. The demos we make are almost without exception, dare I say intrinsically, worthless from a commercial point of view. Working on a demo feels liberating, since it’s nigh impossible to allow such toxicity to seep into your mind even if you wanted to.
That’s not to say demos and various byproducts (especially “demotools”) do not offer the potential for significant personal gain, but at least to me those are just an afterthought, something that develops later either organically, or by choice if the need be (these products do after all offer an incredible potential for filling out a CVs and similar documents).
In case you’re wondering what “demo” or “demoscene” is, better check out the well-made documentary called Moleman2. (and the director, M. Szilárd Matusik’s interview can be read in here.)
#1: q from nonoil/gorakubu is here.
#2: Gargaj from Conspiracy, Ümlaüt Design is here.
#3: Preacher from Brainstorm, Traction is here.
#4: Zavie from Ctrl-Alt-Test is here.
#5: Smash from Fairlight is here.
#6: Gloom from Excess, Dead Roman is here.
#7: kioku from System K is here.
#8: kb from Farbrausch is here.
#9: iq from RGBA is here.
#10: Navis from Andromeda Software Development is here.
#11: Pixtur from Still, LKCC is here.
#12: Cryptic from Approximate is here.
#13: 0x4015 aka Yosshin is here.
#14: Flopine from Cookie Collective is here.
Why I’m interested in demoscene is explained in this article.
And for some of my other posts related to “demo and “demoscene” culture is here.
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