12. Digital culture as cultural heritage

This talk is the final lesson of the demoscene introduction: Digital Art Communities as Cultural Heritage. In this lesson, I would like to talk about why we need to consider digital culture phenomenon as a cultural heritage, and how the demoscene is the first digital culture phenomenon and digital culture community in the world to became intangible cultural heritage.

If we do some simple searches on the internet, we can probably see how big the gap is between Chinese and foreign knowledge on the topic of "demoscene": if we search on Bilibili for the keyword "World Programming Contest", you will find many videos with a high number of views, but we can already see through this course that most of the entries are more than 10 years old, and the audience is still focused on the size of the program, but does not care about the latest progress of the production technology in the demoscene.

The first eleven classes of the semester contain a range of information that reflects the latest changes in the demoscene. Many of the points were mentioned for the first time in China, and it was a breakthrough from the original stereotype of demoscene as "world programming competition" and "64K animation", and a synchronization with the understanding of demoscene by overseas participants and researchers.

We were able to learn that what is widely misunderstood in China as the "World Programming Contest" or "Hacker Programming Contest" is in fact a manifestation called "demo compo". Today's demo competitions are not only focused on programming, nor on size-coding, which focuses on the size of the program, but are a series of comprehensive competitions of electronic, programming, and performance skills related to multimedia technology.

A demo contest is part of a larger gathering of technology enthusiasts, a "demo party", which involves a series of hardware makers such as 3D printers, robots, LED lighting, etc. A modern demo party also includes retro computing activities such as hardware modification and software development of old computers. Today's demo party is a multi-cultural gathering of computing, and the competition is only one aspect of it.

Progress of demoscene recognition of cultural heritage

The demoscene is receiving some special attention in recent years, a major reason being the recognition by several European countries of the demoscene as an intangible cultural heritage of that country. Finland was the first country to recognize the demoscene as intangible cultural heritage, and in April 2020 the Finnish Heritage Agency inscribed the demoscene on Finland's national intangible cultural heritage list.

The second country to inscribe the demoscene as intangible cultural heritage is Germany, In March 2021, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs inscribed the demoscene on the German Intangible Cultural Heritage. This was followed by Poland in December 2021, when the demoscene was inscribed on the national intangible cultural heritage list.

This series of events shows that the demoscene is breaking through its underground status of "subculture" and becoming a cultural heritage recognized by mainstream society, which not only challenges the stereotype of the demoscene as a "niche", but also gives us a huge cultural shock. Even in today's highly developed Internet, a cultural phenomenon as digitally native, influential and recognized by the mainstream society is still unknown and misunderstood in China. This makes it clear that we should not believe that "the Internet can bridge the cultural divide", but rather look more curiously at the cultural differences that are still widespread and even widening in the digital age.

Efforts to declare the cultural heritage of the European scene

The most important force in the declaration of the cultural heritage of the demo scene is the Art-of-Coding initiative. It was launched by the European Federation of Video Game Archives, Museums and Preservation (EFGAMP) together with the Digitale Kultur e.V. association.

A detailed FAQ about the initiative on the Art-of-Coding website adds the background to the whole thing. Digitale Kultur e.V is also the organizer of Evoke, one of the most active demo parties at the moment. In addition, the Polish Demoscene Chronicles, the French digital heritage preservation agency MO5.com, and the Royal Danish Library's Digital Cultural Heritage department are also involved in the declaration of the demoscene as cultural heritage.

Thanks to the efforts of the above-mentioned parties, the demoscene has been successfully recognized as intangible cultural heritage status in the three European countries mentioned above, and with applications in other countries in progress, I believe that in the future the demoscene is likely to become a world-class intangible cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO.

UNESCO's application process

So what is the process of application for the list of intangible heritage? The process is slightly different in each country: Germany needs to apply for a non-regional intangible heritage first, and then for a national one, while in Finland, a Wiki article has to be prepared first, and then a report is submitted on the basis of this article. Generally speaking, the national level is the main threshold for application, and when a cultural phenomenon becomes a national intangible heritage, it becomes eligible to be submitted by the host country to UNESCO for list in the World Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

With more than two countries currently listing the demoscene as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, the case becomes a transnational application, requiring additional coordination efforts, which is currently the main task of EFGAMP and Digitale Kultur e.V., as mentioned above. Of course, the more countries are involved in the application, the better the chances of success in the UNESCO ICH list.

For the time being, the main goal of the European demoscene community is still the national application, and it will take UNESCO about two years to complete the examination of the application for list in the World Intangible Cultural Heritage List, if the transnational application is successfully launched.

The Art-of-Coding website has made available a series of materials related to the German and Finnish applications, including many papers, news articles and videos of presentations, and they also provide a discord channel for interested participants to interact.

"Heritage" is not just about old things

However, there may be some questions about what makes the demoscene "intangible heritage", especially since there is a stereotype in China that intangible heritage is almost always equated with something ancient. There is a huge gap between intangible heritage and digital culture or even popular culture, as if only things that are no longer popular and are in danger of being passed on are considered intangible heritage in China. This stereotype comes from the fact that the contemporary aspect of ICH has long been neglected in the domestic discussion and practice.

UNESCO's definition of intangible cultural heritage in fact emphasizes the contemporary dimension. If we look at UNESCO's "What is Intangible Cultural Heritage" website, we will find that the first description of ICH is:

Traditional, contemporary and living at the same time: intangible cultural heritage does not only represent inherited traditions from the past but also contemporary rural and urban practices in which diverse cultural groups take part.

The contemporary and living nature of ICH is a point that is often overlooked in the current discussion of "ICH" in the Chinese context. I think this is a concept that we should update in particular.

Looking further into the definition of ICH in the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, we can see that the Convention does not emphasize "long history", but rather adaptation and interaction with the environment, and "constantly recreated".

The "intangible cultural heritage" means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.

Therefore, it is clear that "intangible heritage" is not something that is considered fixed, frozen, or locked in time, but rather a practice that is constantly being created and changed. This is also the misconception of cultural heritage conservation in China, which overemphasizes the obsession with repairing the old, practicing the ancient, "ancient methods" and "authentic", while ignoring the aspect of cultural heritage re-creation. Frozen cultural symbols clearly do not provide communities with a sense of identity and continuity, and the overemphasis on "authenticity" lacks respect for diversity and creativity.

By reconceptualizing UNESCO's interpretation of "intangible heritage," we have, in part, explained the reasons why digital cultural phenomena, such as demoscene, which make extensive use of computer technology, have become intangible heritage. The German application, which is the most publicly available, explains in more detail how the demoscene meets UNESCO's requirements for an ICH.

Overview of the German application file

The Germany application file, which is publicly available on the Art-of-Coding website, begins with a description of how to categorize the cultural heritage of the items under application, which is required for applications by UNESCO in Germany, using five keyword groups to summarize the characteristics of the cultural activities included in the application.

Section A) verbally passed on traditions and expressions [keywords]: own technical vocabulary, own idiom with specialized terminology, English is lingua franca Section B) performing arts (music, theatre, dance) [keywords]: composition, performant, live, public presentation, animation Section C) social tradition, (seasonal) celebration and ritual [keywords]: demoparties, competitions, visitor voting, price ceremonies Section D) Knowledge and customs, related to nature or the universe [keywords]: digitalized living environment, cyberspace, virtual reality Section E) traditional craftsmanship [keywords]: coding, composition, animation, adoption, do-it-yourself

Through the previous eleven lessons, we basically covered all the above topics, for example, we were exposed to a series of terminology for demoscene such as demo party, demo compo, wild demo, etc. I have done most of the Chinese translations of the terminology of the demoscene. For example, the translation I mentioned "yǎn shì chǎng jǐng" (演示场景) in first lesson, the translation can be directly associated with the scene of various music styles like "electro scene" or "hip-hop scene".

We have mentioned the demoscene as an aspect of the performing arts, especially in wild demo productions, many of which can themselves be classified as some form of stage performance, such as light shows or musical performances. The most typical case of the demoscene as a part of celebration and ritual are the demo parties we talked about in Lesson 10, many of which have been going on for over 30 years and have influenced the shape of many different computer technology parties.

Demoscene has its own traditional craft, which includes many aspects of programming, composition, animation, etc. This craft is not abstract, but closely related to the adaptation and utilization of computer platforms.

An interesting point is the interpretation of the demoscene as a knowledge and custom related to nature or the universe. For the demoscene, the knowledge related to the environment it presents is one of the biggest changes in human living space in the last 50 or 60 years, namely the emergence of digital platforms, cyberspace and virtual reality.

Although cyberspace and virtual reality are "virtual", the transformation of our living environment by digitalization is real, and it happened before the commercialization of the Internet, such as the electronicization of banking, postal services, transportation and other utilities, the emergence of video games, etc. An example is the Minitel in France, which is not part of the Internet but realized online shopping, social networking and other functions before the Internet, and the process of human use of digital technology is itself a process of adaptation to the environment.

The demoscene, however, has witnessed the entire process of digitization and has spanned almost all the important technological changes. In the fourth lesson, we talked about many old computers that are closely related to the demoscene, whether it is the old 8-bit computers such as ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, or the old 16-bit computers such as Amiga and Atari ST, on which rich demos were born. Also the way the demoscene reacted in the face of PC hardware changes we mentioned in lesson 5 shows the interaction between the community and the technology and business environment.

Digital Heritage

In addition to the demoscene community itself as intangible cultural heritage, the works generated by the demoscene constitute another heritage of humanity as defined by UNESCO, namely digital heritage. When we discuss the heritage of the demoscene, we are actually talking about the dual heritage of intangible cultural heritage and digital heritage.

In 2003, UNESCO proposed Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage, which specifically refers to "born digital", i.e., "no other format but the digital object". The Charter also mentions that digital resources "are frequently ephemeral, and require purposeful production, maintenance and management to be retained. Many of these resources have lasting value and significance, and therefore constitute a heritage that should be protected and preserved for current and future generations."

Although digital resources such as "software and web pages" are mentioned in the Charter, the practice of preserving such resources is still in a relatively preliminary stage. Most digital libraries currently rely on the preservation of software on storage media such as CD-ROMs, but lack appropriate preservation mechanisms for shareware and freeware that are not on physical media and are distributed via the Internet. More often than not, libraries and archives establish digital content repositories to preserve the digitized copy of non-digital content rather than the digital native content, and digital content is regarded as a means to preserve non-digital content rather than the object of preservation, with typical cases such as digitization of ancient books, digitization of audio recordings, digitization of architecture, and so on.

However, the preservation of digital native heritage is a real challenge for today's world, as the process of digitization has produced many technologies that are quickly considered obsolete. Flash, for example, is a technology that has gone from being widely used to being considered obsolete in just over a decade.

Most of the mainstream web browsers today can no longer open Flash animations, but many enthusiasts, including myself, have made or learned Flash at some point and understand some Flash animation techniques. Flash is also an important part of the development of Rich Media on the web, bringing many new concepts and practice to web interaction, and its popularity has directly influenced the shape of today's HTML5 and web games.

The short life of Flash demonstrates that this dynamic process of digital culture formation is largely driven by private companies whose business logic prefers to sell new products rather than preservation and maintenance of old ones, an attitude that is obliterating the culture. There are many examples of this, such as the iOS app store where many games developed for 32-bit devices can no longer be downloaded and run.

In addition to technically blocking older software to prevent communities from running it, private companies sometimes actively pursue legal avenues to oppose the preservation of outdated digital products by enthusiasts and institutions, such as when one of the largest video game companies, Nintendo, once sued an old game download site back in 2018 and won, which caused almost all of the more serious digital culture and video game archiving institutions to stop providing Nintendo's ROMs for public access, including the Console Living Room section of the Internet Archive, which offers an online experience of older games, having circumvented the inclusion of games from Nintendo.

As a result of the uncooperative attitude of private companies in preserving digital heritage, this leads to the loss of meaning and functionality of the software code written for these systems when the historical hardware and software gradually fail and we will lose access.

This is already a fairly obvious problem today, and these problems are likely to get worse in the future. Many of today's video games and even applications operate on a SaaS-like basis, allowing users to "rent" a specific account on a specific device. Once the relevant developers go out of business or no longer to continue to maintain these services, the corresponding software will be invalid, and more difficult to be restored.

Sony launched the VR social platform PlayStation Home on the Playstation 3 in 2008, much like the "metaverse" platform sold by many Internet platform companies today, which ran for seven years and was taken offline in 2015. We can imagine the vast amount of user-generated content on PlayStation Home, such as clothing and furniture in virtual spaces, and the difficulty of archiving and restoring them is clearly higher than for games installed on PC hard drives.

I believe that today's digital media researchers, especially those sensitive to digital heritage, should be wary of commercial "metaverse" companies. Sony, an evergreen in the gaming industry, has been around for 30 years, from the first PlayStation in the early 90s to now, and still cannot guarantee a platform for the long run, and those companies that track the wind are obviously even less likely to do so. How much of the content created during the VR mania of 2015 to 2017 can we still recover today? With all the VR headsets and 3D monitors we can find on second hand market, such as the Baofeng Mojing, SuperD 3D Box, etc., how much of the content on these platforms still has a chance of being re-experienced by people? Obviously this challenge exists all around us.

PlayStation Home is fortunate that some enthusiasts overseas have organized the Destination Home program to restore some of PlayStation Home's features and content, but for these Chinese platforms, once its operators mismanage the platform and shut it down, we may lose access to that content forever.

This competition between preservation and abandonment continues, and in 2018, UNESCO pushed through the Paris Call on Software Source Code as Heritage for Sustainable Development, calling on countries to protect software code as the heritage of humanity. We find that even 15 years after the Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage, the preservation of software, the most important digital native content, remains an under-recognized and often neglected element.

However, software is often disregarded, and its preservation is at stake. Until recently, software source code was not stored in a reliable archive, but was either offline and not available to the public or it was stored on working platforms which may one day disappear. The lack of recognition that software is a unique form of human knowledge, a creative expression of problem solving and part of our heritage compounded the issue of preserving software. Software is fragile.

At the same time, while software source code is the direct expression of human intellectual work on digital systems, executable binary programs are equally human creations that deserve to be organized and preserved as long as source code.

The intergenerational transmission of digital culture

As noted above, digital heritage has a much shorter life, and the reasons for its unavailability are not only human, but also influenced by technological developments and commercial activities. These challenges make the conditions necessary for the intergenerational transmission of digital culture different from those of other types of cultural phenomena.

On page 3 of the German application, it is stated that digital culture is short-lived and highly dependent on technological platforms, and that its life cycle is much shorter than that of human beings.

In regards of passing on the cultural aspects over multiple generations it must be recognized that "generations" define differently in the digital cultural space than in the conventional context, where cultural heritage is being passed on between (human-) generations. Digital cultural forms on the other hand tend to be short-lived, as they are by nature dependent on the technical platform and developed in a specific setting.

Even for same generation of people, we are already experiencing the loss of certain digital cultural content due to the unavailability of technological conditions. Like the Flash I mentioned, it is currently more difficult to access than it was a decade ago, but can still be configured for use on contemporary computers. But it is possible that in another 10 years our computers will no longer be able to run Flash, just as many computers today can no longer run software directly under DOS.

For me this change has already happened, for example, the first animation software I ever used, Animator Pro, was a DOS program, and if the community hadn't developed better DOS emulators like DOSBox, we probably wouldn't have been able to continue to access this historic, groundbreaking animation software. Its developer, Jim Kent, retained the rights to its source code and made the main program open source in 2009, giving it the possibility of being ported to new platforms. However, there is still a large amount of software that is on the verge of being inaccessible.

Thanks to demoscene, much of the knowledge related to older computer platforms, especially 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, has been largely preserved, but there are still many computer devices that cannot continue to function due to the discontinuity of related knowledge.

Digital heritage is often more demanding than non-digital heritage, and may be inaccessible before a generation is aware of its inheritance crisis: customized Qzone, Renren homepages, or games developed on Wenquixing, for example, are all part of the digital heritage of Chinese millennials, but few people are aware of it.

The demoscene community, which preserves a large number of digital works and practices, is thus considered "a bedrock digital culture with its 30-year-spanning history, and one of the few that was able to conserve its cultural identity over several technological milestones" (German application, p. 3).

Legacies based on remix and migrations

In lesson 5 we mentioned the reaction of the demoscene in the face of technological change: the scene's acceptance of new platforms and technologies is neither total nor unreserved, but is accompanied by intense controversy and discussion of progressive acceptance. This introspective debate allows the demoscene to embrace new technologies while maintaining the continuity and identity of its own community.

An important practice for the demoscene to maintain its legacy is the mixing and rearranging of established content. For example, Second Reality, one of the most iconic works in the demoscene, is one of the most reworked works in the scene. Its original version was based on a 486-level PC, and enthusiasts in the demoscene explored it meaningfully in both new and old directions, with the work being ported to the much older Commodore 64 computer in 1997 and, after the new millennium, to the mixed reality capabilities of smartwatches, holographic displays, and smartphones.

Another example is the 1992 Amiga computer demo program State of Art, whose iconic silhouette dance images were recreated in 2021 as a laser projection on top of a barn outside of Montreal (State of Laser Beam). This attempt at "remix" shows that the demoscene is not bound to "authenticity" or content exclusivity, but is open to the freedom of the community to evolve and allow content and cultural symbols to break through the boundaries of the platform to be retained in a rapidly changing technological world.

The demoscene developed a sense of preserving its digital cultural heritage early on. Statistics on the demoscene's largest website, pouet.net, show that it has over 88,000 archived works, over 13,000 production groups, over 1,300 demo parties and over 4,300 discussion forums and BBSes. The works are collected and organized as early as 2000, while the release time of the works can be traced back to the early 80s.

In addition to comprehensive archive sites like pouet.net, the demoscene also has a number of enthusiasts who maintain categorized sites, such as the Mod Archive, which holds over 25,000 music files created using Trackers. The site also keeps a lot of metadata about the work itself, such as author, genre of music, etc. A similar preservation site dedicated to a particular category of activity in the demoscene is demoparty.net, which organizes a large amount of information related to demo parties.

While the demoscene is a digital native community, it also generates a lot of non-digital material, such as letters, flyers, posters, etc., which is also organized and protected by enthusiasts in the demoscene. The Got Papers website has preserved a lot of paper materials related to the demoscene, and even some handwritten notes from demo parties are well preserved. This thorough archiving is evidence that the demoscene is considered its cultural heritage by the community to which it belongs.

Conclusion and insights

That's about it for today's presentation of the heritage of the demoscene. Perhaps what is important in discussing the demoscene as an intangible cultural heritage at this point is not so much the knowledge of the event itself, but the inspiration that can be drawn from it in terms of understanding digital culture.

The demoscene shows us a tension in digital culture, a tension that is reflected in the resilience of the digital culture to which the community belongs in the face of technological change. During the 8-bit computer era when the demoscene was born, the computer industry as a whole encouraged people to program. Both the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 had built-in programming environments, and the computer education community and related publications actively encouraged young computer users of the time to acquire programming skills. In that atmosphere, programming was considered a crucial part of universal computer education.

After the 1990s, however, the focus of computer education shifted to teaching the use of commercial software such as Photoshop and MS Office, and programming languages became a skill that only a few people could master. Faced with the challenges of these changes, the demoscene has actively reinvented itself while retaining its cultural core.

As mentioned in lesson 5, since the new millennium the demoscene has shifted from an elitist community of programming-savvy multimedia hackers to a community more open to tools with lower barriers to entry, such as Processing, and has embraced new participants through events such as the Graffathon (graphic hackathon) and new competition categories.

And secondly, the demoscene shows what can be achieved with digital culture, especially non-commercial folk digital culture, which I think is an important point. For the current situation in China, digital culture has been developed for a relatively short period of time, while commercial forces entered early on, and there is a huge gap between commerce and folklore, so that grassroots, non-commercial, non-academic, non-utilitarian digital culture creations are scarce and unappreciated in China.

However, there are clearly such folk communities of digital culture in China, and the amateur Flash animator community called "flasher" is a good example, but the internal and external environment limits the level it can reach. Digital culture can even include content that has not traditionally been considered cultural creation, such as the profile pages of Qzone and Renren, which were once highly customizable, even though they did not have a clear creative theme, but reflected a distinct cultural identity. The output of this content relied on online platforms controlled by large companies, while Chinese enthusiasts did not develop a sense of preserving their own cultural heritage, which has now disappeared in large numbers.

European enthusiasts have shown us the fact that the achievements of non-commercial folk digital culture and digital art are comparable to many traditional cultural forms. The successful ICH applications of demoscene in several European countries provides a model for digital culture preservation and interpretation of digital culture, and the study of demoscene allows us to re-examine our own attitudes toward digital culture and digital heritage.

The last point, which is also of particular relevance, is that the demoscene provides us with a new way of thinking about cultural exchange. In mid-June, Chongqing hosted The 13th Hungarian Cultural Festival in Western China, and Hungary is one of the European countries where the demoscene has flourished, with Hungarian enthusiasts participating in demo production activities as early as 1986,. The most detailed book documenting the reality of the scene, "Freax: The Brief History of the Demoscene", was written by Hungarian researcher Tamas Polgar. Heavyweight demo events such as the Function Party and demo groups such as Conspiracy have also come from Hungary. There are also active demoscene communities in Serbia, Greece, and other European countries.

At present, there is a significant gap between the number of participants and the quality of work in digital culture in China and Europe. We should consider the possible role of demoscene in digital culture exchange when developing cultural exchange between China and Europe. I also hope that one day we will see more digital art enthusiasts engaging and participating in the demoscene, which is an interesting and exiting international digital art community.