Sub-Culture Club: Exploring the Demoscene with Linger in Shadows

In every medium there are sub-cultures; microcosmic portions of the fan base that push their love of the medium to a new level, expressing their adoration in creative outbursts. Video game fans can become speedrunners; those who master and exploit for the shortest playtimes, or computer artists can dabble in algorithm art; generating artistic expressions with code.

The Demoscene is the artistic brain child of both the videogames and computer arts cultures, creating seemingly-impossible music and art in the limited confines of the Atari ST’s sound chip or the ZX Spectrum’s colour palette. Pushing the diminutive machines to their absolute limit with smart programming became a competitive sport in of itself with artists and programmers constantly trying to outperform their peers.

Not shackled by the needs for gameplay, nor potential bugs and hazards by pushing the chips to their maximum, these artistic hackers pushed out amazing pseudo-3D effects, rich uses of colour and harmonious choirs, composed entirely of bleeps and bloops.

My first introduction to the medium arose during my use of the Amiga. Commodore’s home computer was a veritable stomping ground for pirates, and each cracked copy of Superfrog and every copy of The Lost Vikings with a cheat trainer would open with a tech demo.
Spinning balls, 3D objects, pulsating text calling out other scene members and funky music – they always baffled, but were never a frustrating time waste.

Move to 2008 and the scene is still very much alive. Now the diminutive graphics chip is the Playstation 3’s 256 MB GDDR3 RAM graphics processing unit. Spinning 3D cubes will hardly suffice. Linger in Shadows features, for a 7 minute long interactive movie, some of the most amazing graphics on the system. Beautiful 3D models, elegant animation and topped off with an oil-painting esque filter. A Shadow of the Colossus remake in this style would be mind-blowing.

The actual game, which is sold for £1.99, has less of an obvious impact, no instant gratification. The video, a mix of static paintings and full 3D models, plays a short clip before giving you control of the scene. Using the controller, you rewind and play through the events, manipulating the piece with a shake of the SixAxis or a press of a button.

It’s very vague; no real sense of reaction to your moves, a seemingly illogical structure that will leave you more often bewildered than satisfied.

But then, that would be taking Linger in Shadows for something that it’s not; a game. It’s a piece of digital art, a progressive fusion of beautiful visual design and human interaction. The experience won’t take long to “play” and you might wonder what your £2 actually bought.
But, if you have any interest in using the medium of videogames as art it’s a worthwhile download. Besides, outside of the realm of piracy and mods, there is absolutely nothing like this on any other console…

Links
Demoscene.info
BitWorld – Amiga
Pouet – Linger in Shadows
Linger in Shadows Demo Group: Plastic