Speakers

Last updated: March 15, 2007 (FINAL)

BLOCKPARTY has assembled a solid lineup of demoscene and artscene-related folks to give presentations throughout the event, covering a wide range of subjects. One admission gets you into both NOTACON and BLOCKPARTY access, and Notacon will be hosting many speakers as well.

Andy "Phoenix" Voss: Allow Me To Demonstrate

For the first edition of Blockparty, Notacon regulars will be introduced to demos and the "scene" they created. We're all familiar with computer tinkering, but this phenomenon of computer graphics programming "just for fun" has been confined mostly to Europe since the 1980's. We'll see what motivated these kids to collaborate and compete, why they kept underground, and what some demo-making veterans are doing today. Clips of various demos will be shown, from the 8-bit days to modern times. We'll see demos as abstract art, as digital movies, and as hardware record-breakers. We'll see how the spirit of the demo scene has snuck into mainstream culture, and what each can learn from each other.

Andy Voss has been interested in demos since 1992. He is considered one of the few American experts on the subject, having watched thousands of them from various platforms, and having attended four European demo parties. He has been involved in numerous demoscene projects over the years, including the Hornet Archive, the Demodulate music website, and the MindCandy DVD. He also had a short music tracking stint in the 1990s as a lead member of the Kosmic Free Music Foundation. His career has nothing at all to do with demos.

Jim "Trixter" Leonard: 8088 Corruption

A candidate for Most Stupid PC Trick, 8088 Corruption displays full-motion color video on a stock IBM PC with nothing more than a CGA card and a Sound Blaster Pro for audio. It became a minor web phenomenon when a video of it in operation was posted to the social news site Digg.com and was then later featured on Diggnation. In this presentation, Jim will explain the background of 8088 Corruption, including covering the techniques used to create it and how it can be further improved. He'll also bring along some Big Blue hardware to prove it's not a hoax. No prerequisite knowledge of IBM PC hardware is necessary to attend.

Jim Leonard is the founder of MobyGames, the world's largest online game database, and the MindCandy series of demoscene DVDs. Jim was involved in the PC demo scene in the 1990s as well as the archival demogroup Hornet, and the residual flashbacks of that episode prompt him to code 8088 assembler for fun in his spare time.

Andrew "Necros" Sega: Taking Tracking Mainstream

Tracker-based music has been instrumental in providing the audio component of demos since the early 90's. Always limited by the processing power and memory of the machine, creating these types of tracks is a challenge and an artform. Andrew will present some of the history and development of this unique form of "programmed" music: from the early days of .MOD files, through modern programs such as Buzz. Andrew will also engage in some live tracking demonstrations, with modern tools, to show how the methods can be invaluable in creating professional, CD-ready tracks.

Andrew Sega has been creating scene-oriented music since 1992. A founding member of the group "Five Musicians", he was one of the bigger names in the PC tracker scene, and has created hundreds of tracks in the MOD, S3M, and IT formats. Nowadays, he's doing music profesionally: touring Europe multiple times with his band Iris, and creating soundtracks for such games as Unreal Tournament and Freelancer. He's also spent almost a decade employed in the game industry, and has just left a 5-year stint at Microsoft to start his own embryonic studio.

Christian "RaD Man" Wirth: Building Character: ANSI from the Ground Up

With limitations in color, character set and size, the ANSI artscene still found ways to innovate, flourish and reach amazing heights in the last 25 years. Starting with a brief history of pre-ANSI character art, RaD Man of ACiD describes the problems and solutions of working in a text-based medium, lessons which will crop up again and again working with computers and scant resources in relation to art. Topics covered will include development tools, distribution methods, quality control and secret tricks that arose during ACiD's 14-year history.

Christian Wirth, aka RaD Man, is a computer artist and historian that founded ANSI Creators in Demand in 1990, which later became ACiD Productions, in order to celebrate the ANSI/ASCII art form. After ACiD moved to a dormant state, Wirth began and completed work on a DVD-ROM featuring over a decade and a half of artpacks by ACiD and many others called Dark Domain.

David "Polaris" Valentine: Techniques for 4kb Intro Development

The demoscene emerged from the fusion of art and technical innovation. Nothing quite captures this spirit as much as the challenge of creating a full production with music, sound and graphics in 4096 bytes or less.

This seminar of 4kb intro development will contrast standard demo development to 4kb intro development, and provide a brief synopsis of various tips for 4kb intro development. While this is a technical discussion, it will cover basic concepts so it will be accessible to a beginner as well as advanced audience members.

Over the last seven years, David Valentine (Polaris/Northern Dragons) has contributed to several demoscene productions, including six 4kb intro productions. He was a featured speaker of Pilgrimage 2004 on the topic of Intro development. Dave is the founder of Northern Dragons (North America's most active Demo group) and the co-founder of in4k.untergrund.net, a wiki portal for information about 4kb intro development. He actively writes technical articles for the demoscene in web-zines Hugi and Scenerep. In his professional life he works for IBM Canada.

Nullsleep: Squarewave to Heaven: An introduction to the Chiptune Music Scene

An entire generation has now grown up with the likes of Atari, Nintendo, Sega and many other console systems, not to mention the "classic plastic" home computers of the 1980s. Throughout these last 25 years, the unmistakable sound of 8-bit chips have pervaded their ears and become a background soundtrack to their lives. Now, an entire scene of artists are using this unique and unmistakable sound to push musical boundaries, both recalling and outdoing what came before. Jeremiah Johnson (also known as Nullsleep) is one of the people at the forefront of this scene and will present both a history and a collection of works from this retrofuture soundscape.

Nullsleep uses Game Boys and NES consoles to create conceptually unique music that blends subversive hardware hacking with powerful melodic pop. In 1999, together with friend Mike Hanlon from Detroit, he cofounded the 8bitpeoples: a collective of artists interested in the audio/video aesthetics of early computers and videogames. In the time since, Nullsleep has released a number of recordings through 8bitpeoples, his most recent work focusing on music created with the Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System platforms. His constant push for new ways to force the most out of yesterday's machines and the unparalleled romantic chiptune intensity embodied in his music have gained him notice worldwide. Whether thrashing away on a keyboard hooked up to a Game Boy like an electric guitar or rocking hacked NES cartridges, Nullsleep consistently demonstrates his passion for pushing the limits of both the hardware and the heart. In February of 2007, Nullsleep contributed a track to 8-bit operators, an 8-bit tribute album of remixed Kraftwerk songs, published on Astralwerks records. Photo credit: Joshua Davis