I wonder which is the more techno-deterministic. Demos seem if nothing else, profoundly situated and existentially rooted, more or less the opposite of the techno-deterministic stance. Demos are about working within a highly specific situation into which one has been thrown – hacking, abusing, and repurposing whatever is available, to generate a highly specific performance in a situation without beginning or end.
Yes, in a local sense, authorship and virtuosity matter intensely; it’s a battle, the motivation in creating any specific demo is indeed to “win” by creating the most impressive result using the fewest resources. I agree that we shouldn’t ignore this aspect. But I also argue that we should embrace it. It’s important not to miss the forest for the trees.
In a global sense – the sense in which one would choose to participate in the scene in the first place – authorship and virtuosity don’t matter at all: the scene collectively authors itself, each demo in a large part recombines aspects of the previous ones; every action is part of a collective emergence and is only intelligible in light of the world brought forth in this emergence. In the last instance (in terms of one’s overall motivation to participate in the scene, not to make a specific demo) the ego is wrested from the participant and delivered over to the scene. The ego in other words is only “used” by the scene as a tool to propagate itself forward. The motivation to participate in the scene at all, on the whole or at least in part, seems as the very opposite of anything that fetishizes virtuosity, or that promotes narcissistic ego-identification; it’s the exhilaration of immersing oneself in a collective emergent expression, the joy of bringing forth a new world.
A similar dialectic exists within competitive games: while the goal of a participant in any specific contest is to win the game, the goal of the contest itself is to bring out both contestants in their ownmost, as each contestant’s style, strategy, sensibility – indeed, their entire way of being – is articulated most precisely only in the struggle. Win or lose, one surrenders one’s ego to the game; one lets one’s ego be used by the game in order that it may disclose oneself to oneself – an act which immediately lays the ego bare, exposing it at its most vulnerable, stripping it of any narcissistic pretension.
In any specific contest, a person may win and another may lose. But the contest does not really “make” one person a winner and the other a loser. The game discloses winners and losers alike most precisely and articulately to themselves (and perhaps to each other, and to the audience, situation permitting). The content of such disclosure is specific and irreducible. That’s why you play the game - not simply trusting who’s better “on paper”. But yes, within a single game, both players must fight at all costs to win – otherwise such disclosure simply does not happen.
Anyway, I don’t disagree with the problems you have pointed out, but I just would like to consider them in a slightly broader context.
That and if we expect real change (something quite on my mind given current crises)… I don’t think we should simply dismiss that which is most near, and by this I mean exactly things like the demoscene, emergent fandom cultures, new technologically-mediated new religious movements, and everything else that is continually unmentioned or dismissed as unworthy of serious attention because it did not come forth either an academic or in an industry setting. Not ignoring goes beyond discussing, it involves actually reaching out – building bridges and forging connections. Which involves for the most part listening, trying to accept things on their own terms, as they show themselves from themselves. Sure, we may recognize aspects as problematic, yet is this a recognition that meets the phenomenon on its own terms? To see requires a world, and that world has not yet been brought forth.
To bring forth a world – true change comes not through incremental innovation (“normal science” – the specialty of the academy) but by first recognizing, then gathering and articulating marginal practices that are emerging all around us, then bringing forth a world where they can be seen on their own terms, perhaps for the very first time. Such would then be a paradigm shift. The very idea of a “paradigm” is that of an example, something wholly singular, something preserved in itself that shines forth by its own light. Something that propagates through repetition rather than being conditioned by generality. Paradigm shifts never come from the lone warrior-genius, they come from what is already under way but not yet “in being”, not yet intelligible. They come from the “not where” and “not when” that is precisely what is closest to us and yet what we least notice. New worlds do not appear in response to what is past. They set up their own past, present, and future. I think the very least we can do is open ourselves a bit.
