What was the demoscene to me?
As a coder and composer, my sense is that writing code and writing music are similar processes. Both involve creating and solving problems over time using logic and imagination. The difference is in how you test the results: “this adds up” vs “this sounds and feels good”. The former is objective, the latter is not. The most beautiful things come from combining the two, appealing to our entire human mind.
The demoscene brought objective and subjective together, including visual art, nearly always animated using superbly optimized algorithms. Computer demos were the ultimate point of convergence of the most beautiful code, the most intelligent music and the most creative art, all stemming from incredibly competitive, stimulant-fueled minds working in constrained environments. Looking back, demos were the shamanistic beginnings of electronic music and computer-generated imagery, the logos of the great democrews cave paintings from the home computer era.
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