GOT PAPERS? - preserving the scene's material heritage
category: general [glöplog]
Once again, Se7en scanned some things which he accumulated during his long-standing demoscene career: Stickers, disk covers, flyers, and some weirder things like “demoparty dollars” and a Breakpoint sticker produced by a hotel. Enjoy!
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So if I mailed you some key fobs...
hehe. I have to at least partly attempt to mention those as often as Gargaj thinks I do. :P
but seriously, this stuff is neat. :)
hehe. I have to at least partly attempt to mention those as often as Gargaj thinks I do. :P
but seriously, this stuff is neat. :)
That PLK article was seriously fascinating stuff. In my opinion Got Papers is one of the best (executed) scene-initiatives in a very long time!
@Starchaser, you are very welcome to mail me the keyfobs - however, right now there is a serious "traffic jam" concerning gotpapers materials, so it might take a very long time until they are processed.
@Slummy, thank you, I am seriously flattered by your opinion. It's just a part of my "serious" research project in my university job, but it kind of turned into something of a big stand-alone value. The only problem is that it's an insane amount of work to conduct as a one-man project in the evenings (while my research superiors highly endorse it, it's not exactly something I am supposed to do during my office hours), so I'm still desperately looking for more dedicated volunteers from within the scene to support me with processing the scans and making metadata sheets.
@Slummy, thank you, I am seriously flattered by your opinion. It's just a part of my "serious" research project in my university job, but it kind of turned into something of a big stand-alone value. The only problem is that it's an insane amount of work to conduct as a one-man project in the evenings (while my research superiors highly endorse it, it's not exactly something I am supposed to do during my office hours), so I'm still desperately looking for more dedicated volunteers from within the scene to support me with processing the scans and making metadata sheets.
Here we go with another portion of Fzool‘s vast collection of paper artifacts from the mid-1990s C64 demoscene. This time it’s disk covers – used to store 5,25″ floppy disks, but also exchanged among sceners as a commodity of its own, as can be seen with these covers, copied on A4 sheets and “swapped” by sceners without actually cutting them out. “Cover designer” was a proper scene “profession” at that time, and there are a few stunning pieces of work among these covers.
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It’s hard for contemporary demosceners to imagine, but back in the 1980s, when much of the scene‘s activity evolved around pirated games, and the separation between “illegal” and “legal” scenes was far from complete, sceners were always conscious of the potential for unwanted contact with the police – at least in countries like Germany, where software pirates became a target for law enforcement as early as in the mid-1980s. Since proceedings in the 1980s against alleged and real software pirates took place in a very recent past, it’s not really possible to explore the events from the perspective of law enforcement through archival work. However, some veterans kept the documents that were handed to them in the course of investigations. We are highly indebted to Marty of the (in)famous C64 cracking group Radwar Enterprises 1941 for providing us with documents from the investigation against him in late 1989.
READ THE FULL STORY:
READ THE FULL STORY:
True, the dummies got caught (and wen to to be "infamous" ?), the smart ones didn't. you now see the exact same things happening with so-called "hackers" (in the media downbeat sense).
The best hackers are the ones you never read about.
Today we give you some scans from the private collection of Dr. Science/Atlantis, a Swiss coder and cracker who was a member of the legendary Computer Freaks Association in the late 1980s and is still active in the C64 scene. Apart from some neat disk covers and CFA’s official greeting list, the probably most exciting part of this installment are the letters Dr. Science received from fellow sceners in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The letters are exemplary for the global networks built by the scene already back then – even this small sample includes correspondents from countries such as Australia, Finland, and Norway. Furthermore, the letter from Snap demonstrates how group members conducted collaborative work on demo productions before email and IRC. Expect more scans from Dr. Science’s collection in the near future!
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Nice!
Here is a mixed bag of demoparty-related scans accumulated over the past months. The materials range from 1992 to 2004 – a time span during which the demoscene evolved into what it is nowadays. Contributors for this update are Craid, Exocet, Goat, Ile, and Titus.
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Here is the second batch of materials provided by an anonymous contributor. Once again, you can browse through the paper relics of the very dawn of the home computer cracking & demo cultures – fragile traces of long forgotten individuals and groups as well as of those who came to be considered as scene legends later on. Among the more unusual scans from this update is the disk cover done by the early Amiga group Warfalcons. Even though Amiga floppy disks did not technicaly need paper sleeves, Warfalcons still made a batch of these – just like the usual ones on the C64, but in 3,5″ size. Another remarkable artifact is a letter from a Belgian Amiga swapper around 1986 – typewritten on his father’s busines card. Another example of how much early digital subcultures had to rely on analogue techniques.
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When I visited C64 scener Goat/Laxity to pick up his C64 disk covers collection for scanning, there was one pile that he didn’t want to pass on at first. “Why one would want to preserve such primitive disk covers?”, he objected. Still, I took the covers with me, and here they are. While there had been some amazingly skillful disk covers in the previous upates, the ones presented today are admittedly not on par with them. Nevertheless, they are important to get a picture of the C64 scene beyond its “elite”. For every top swapper with loads of contacts and “0-day stuff”, there were hundreds of kids swapping with a few contacts only, dabbling in PD software and old cracks, and yet seeing themselves as part of the same scene community as the “elite”. Obviously, they wanted to have their own disk covers, like the “big ones”. Sometimes, these covers are the only product they left behind. Their somewhat clumsy designs do not need to be judged on terms of “lack of skills” – these covers can be seen as examples of naïve art, compensating the lack of adherence to any aesthetic rules with a lively will for self-expression. In fact, some of these coves look surprisingly up-to-date, and could just as well be a product of post-modern hipster aesthetics.
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Some of those are actually rather nice, cheers!
Today’s update features paper materials from late-1990s/early-2000s demoparties from Fzool‘s collection, including a rare tUM’99 votesheet drawn by C64 paper graphics legend Zapotek, and an Evoke 2000 flyer by Noize of Kolor.
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Quote:
AND FINALLY HERE IT IS...(AUDIENCE GOES AHHHHHHH!!!) -FOLLOW ME-f
(AUDIENCE GOES OHHHHHH!!!) d AFTER A LONG TIME IT IS OUT... cFIRST
OF ALL SOME CREDITS... h ALL GREAT GRAFIX AND ANIMATIONS WERE DONE BY DARK,
OUR NEW GFX-MAN CODING BY DELTA AND DR BEAT i MUSIC BY ROMEO KNIGHT (ANOTHER
GREAT TUNE!) CALL THE RED SECTOR WORLD HEADQUARTER AT: a 5176630571
(2400-9600 BAUD) OR CALL OUR VOICE MAILBOX AT: 5048305349 !!! c
TO CONTACT RED SECTOR WRITE TO: a POST BOX 51 L-6601 WASSERBILLIG
LUXEMBURG NO LAMERS!!!!!!!!! c SPECIAL THANX TO OUR NEW MEMBER
NEGATIV POLARITY WHO MANAGES THE WHQ!! NOW US LOOK AT SOME RUMOURS... 1.
HERE IN WUNSTORF IS A GUY WHO CALLS HIMSELF DR BEAT !!! THIS IS NOT DR BEAT OF
RED SECTOR!!! HE ALSO BOUGHT AN INTRO FROM US... 2. THERE ARE NO FINISHED
GAMES FROM DELTA AND DR BEAT !!! WE ALSO HAVE NO CONTRACT WITH ANY SOFTWARE
COMPANY AND ARE NOT INTERESTED IN ONE AT THE MOMENT!!!! 3. WE WILL START
WRITING A GAME NOW AND THAT INCLUDES THAT THERE WILL NOT BE SO MANY DEMOS IN THE
NEAR FUTURE!!!! BY THIS STATEMENT YOU CAN SEE THAT THERE SURELY WILL BE NO
SECOND MEGADEMO !!! 4. WE ARE NOT IN TARKUS TEAM !! THEY ARE VERY GOOD
FRIENDS OF US BUT WE WILL NOT JOIN THEM!! ( HELLO TO E 605 - SPIDER - THE
VISIONER - REBEL - PULSATOR - TRANSFORMER AND ALL OTHERS IN LUEDENSCHEID !!) 5.
AS YOU ALL KNOW THERE CAN T BE THE SCENE WITHOUT ASSHOLES!!! I TALK ABOUT STORM
! IT SEEMS TO BE THAT THEY WANNA GET TROUBLE BY TALKING ARROGANT SHIT !! NOTE ..
YOU MUST BE VERY CAREFUL IN THE NEAR FUTURE ....!!! 6. WE HEARD THAT ASCENDERS
TOLD THAT ONE OF US WOULD JOIN THEM... THAT IS NOT TRUE!! 7. THERE ARE SOME
GUYS WHO MEAN THAT THEY CAN SAY : I AM OF RED SECTOR !! NOTE TO ALL THEM: IF I
GET YOU YOU CAN COUNT YOUR BONES!!! SO MUCH TO: DESTROYING LAMERS ! EVEN IF YOU
INSERATE IN THE ASM YOU COULD NOT SAY : I AM OF RSI !! OK ??? FINE ! SPECIAL TCC
XMAS GREETINGS TO: THE MOST MEMBERS OF TARKUS TEAM ( I NAMED THEM BEFORE) -
SILENTS ( HELLO JOHN. DID YOU GET MY PACKAGE?) - TRISTAR (HALLO MIKE AND
RUEDIGER) - VISION FACTORY ( HELLO TSH AND KEVIN) - CRUSADERS ( THANX FOR
FILMS. KEEP ON YOUR GOOD WORK) - JPN OF L4 ( HELLO FELLOW- ONCE YOU WILL KILL
HOLGI WITH YOUR LETTERS) - IT (THANX FOR MUSIX) - PHENOMENA (KEEP UP YOUR GOOD
WORK) - BLOODSUCKERS - SCOOPEX (HELLO JOERG) - ALL OTHER RED SECTOR MEMBERS ALL
OVER THE WORLD AND TO ALL OTHERS WE FORGOT BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT THE GREETINGSLIST
OF IRATA !!!
The first year of Got Papers? is coming to an end, and it’s time to thank all contributors to this project. A staggering 431 items have been scanned, categorised, and uploaded since the launch in April, and about three times the amount of artifacts is still waiting to be processed – which will hopefully happen quicker than before, not only due to our volunteers, but also thanks to Gargaj/Conspiracy, who just developed a metadata processing tool for us as an early Christmas present. The credit for the overwhelming amount of materials must go to 49 contributors from all over Europe – sceners who have searched in their basements, wardrobes, and attics for long-forgotten materials and made an effort to share them with us. Thank you!
2016 will be an exciting year for the project – most importantly because we have just received an absolutely stunning donation.
CLICK TO READ ON:
2016 will be an exciting year for the project – most importantly because we have just received an absolutely stunning donation.
CLICK TO READ ON:
Swappers did not just stick floppy disks into envelopes – they also had to put up with a lot of paperwork. Before the era of online communciation, building up trust and keeping social networks intact meant writing paper letters to your contacts. For sceners who communicated a lot through postal channels, it was an obvious choice to print own stationeries / letterheads for higher recognition value and a professional appearance. The task of writing letters, however, could become a time management problem for “mega swappers“, who sent out dozens of envelopes every day. Thus they printed standard blanks where they just needed to tick boxes. The options available on these fill-out forms, ranging from dead serious to rather humorous, served to evaluate the contacts’ previous sendings’ quality, to communicate requests for further software exchanges, and to get messages across. For today’s update, Goat, Lance, Se7en, and Thorion provided us with samples of such swapper stationeries and blanks, which were common in the late 1980s and early 1990s all over the global scene – from Denmark to Australia, from Germany to Hungary.
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did Adok tell you to post a link to the "Auschwitz Magpack" or was it your own idea?
Dipswitch: I left you a msg at csdb with a late xmas present. :) Perhaps it's usefull for "got papers" .. cheers!
Sir: have a nice 2016 with less bullying on pouet ;)
Sir: have a nice 2016 with less bullying on pouet ;)
As announced earlier – here we go with the first instalment of scans from the private archive of Skylab & General Zoff (of New Balance Bochum/The Movers/Elite fame). A truly fascinating glimpse into the 1980s’ C64 and Amiga cracking scene, with too many highlights to mention them all. For those with basic knowledge about the history of the cracking- and demoscene, or those who experienced these times themselves, the list of authors below will already be enough to realise the significance of the archive – and this is only a small portion of what we can expect from it. As for highlights regarding the letters’ content, I’ll just throw in some random aspects: Scottish crackers in 1986; a note from Strider announcing the foundation of Fairlight; Irata’s original letterhead; cracking tips from Mr. Zeropage; German public phone cheating techniques; anxieties over first place in intro greetings; transatlantic flows of material goods; and many more. Enjoy this first instalment – there is more to come!
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@magic, thanks for the hint, i had no idea this kind of stuff is to be found on artcity. who is behind that particular account? i didn't check csdb yet, will do next week as soon as i have proper internet again (posted the above post from xxx/haujobb's flat).
Dipswitch: I took a look at artcity again. They have a section called 'Sceneartifacts' users can upload there 'Sceneartifacts' there.. Above were only shown votesheets.. There is alot more.. Per upload the user is mentioned who uploaded the artifact..
This is the first page (of 70 !!)
http://artcity.bitfellas.org/index.php?a=artist&id=1447&p=0
Do check csdb.. you probably will enjoy all inside the package..
This is the first page (of 70 !!)
http://artcity.bitfellas.org/index.php?a=artist&id=1447&p=0
Do check csdb.. you probably will enjoy all inside the package..
Here we go with the final instalment of Fzool‘s disk cover collection. It features 31 disk sleeves in a broad range of styles, from naïve to sophisticated, from fantasy to science fiction to erotica, from heavy metal to graffiti… It gives a good overview of disk covers that were produced in the 1990s, when swapping on the C64 slowly became less important, and disk covers turned from a necessity into an art of its own. Enjoy!
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