This Friday I'm flying to Germany to attend the Breakpoint Demoparty (underground computer digital arts festival). I'll be unavailable from Wednesday night till Monday, late in the night.

The main reasons I'm travelling there, besides having immense geek fun and loads of cheap crap beer, is that my demo team's production of 2004 called "Iconoclast" for which I've composed the tune "Amphetamine Tears", has been nominated for 5 awards. We are also releasing a new demo at Breakpoint ( http://breakpoint.untergrund.net ).

But let me explain a bit.

Demos are executable files which show something like a videoclip, graphics and effects combined with a soundtrack. The computer's CPU and graphics card are used to display all these effects on the screen, the way games do, so everything is done in realtime in contrast to something prerendered (like an .avi for example). Comparing a prerendered video file to a demo would be like comparing Cinema to Theater.

There is a whole culture behind demos, and quite the history, but if you want a better understanding of what demos and the demoscene are, you can visit this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

Now, around europe every year there are demo parties, where demo groups (groups of people.. usually a programmer, a graphician and a musician) enter their demos in the party's competition for fame and in big parties even prizes. It has also become a tradition the past few years, that demos from the whole previous year released at any party are reviewed and the best of them are nominated for awards in different categories.. Kind of like the Oscars... but for Demos. These are called the "Scene Awards" ( http://awards.scene.org ).

My team is called Andromeda Software Development (ASD for short) and we are the only demo group that has actually managed to escape the boundaries of greece and compete against the rest of the world.. and with quite the success I might add. Two of our demos have been nominated for awards in the past two years ('Dreamchild' for best soundtrack and public's choice award, but didn't get any, and 'Planet Risk' which was nominated for Best soundtrack, Best Effects, Public's Choice and Best overall demo, and actually won the Best Overall Demo and Public's choice award, ranking second in the other two).

This year, our demo 'Iconoclast' has been nominated for 5 (!) awards. Best Soundtrack, Best Direction, Best Effects, Public's Choice and Best Overall Demo. 'Iconoclast' has won the first place last year in the Assembly demo party held in Finland (the biggest demo party in the world with 10.000 participants). Traditionally, the Scene Awards prize giving ceremony will be held within the boundaries of the Breakpoint party. Chances to win one, some or even all of the awards we're nominated for are high. So I'm very eager to go once again.

Talking about demos, often doesn't make sense to the non savvy people. So the best way to understand what a demo is, is to see one. You can watch all of our demos by downloading them on our group's homepage: http://asd.demoscene.gr

And if you really want to dig into the culture of demos and be really amazed by demos.. get this one and run it..

http://www.scene.org/file_dl.php?url=ht ... &id=192412

This ladies and gentlemen, is a 64 Kilobyte .exe file. There's nothing hidden in there. 64kilobytes are the size equivalant of a medium compressed .JPG image... or 8 seconds worth of listening to SI Radio. It can fit 20 times in a floppy diskette (yeah those old ones that you never use any more). It is also 1/10th the size of a 5 minute mp3 song. In other words.. it's bloody small..

Run it.. and enjoy the show =)

(You need a good graphics card to view demos... but since you are mostly gamers, I trust that you already have one).

Anyway.. during the party I will have a laptop with me and it will be hooked it up in a giant LAN. I will have skype, a mike and headphones, so I might be able (if I can get through the firewall there) to call-in someone's show and give details about what's going on at the party place.

We will also be releasing two new demos. One at Breakpoint in Germany, and one at The Gathering in Norway (our programmer will go). I will notify you about the results one way or the other.. I'll prolly have IRC access from the partyplace.

If you have any questions.. fire away. Just felt the need to inform you about this activity of mine that not many know =)

Finally, if anyone is in Germany .. and anywhere near Bingen Am Rhein, and wants to meet DJ aMUSiC... send me a PM =)