WE GOT THIS!

The work of our demoscene hereby belongs to the digital heritage of Polish culture.

And now fasten your seatbelts, because it's going to be pretty elegant. Thanks to the involvement of the Polish demoscene community, the Polish Demoscene Chronicles has created and submitted an application for entry on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Today we received the signed document. The application has been accepted.

Polish demoscene is officially Polish cultural heritage.

We are proud to successfully participate in the international initiative Art of Coding, which aims to recognize of demoscene creation as a craft and art, whose development is a part of modern human history. Poland joins the successes of Finland and Germany, and our experience opens doors for other countries, whose demoscene communities are also working on their proposals. The goal of this cooperation is to include the world demoscene on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity - and it will be the first ever digital culture on this list. digital culture on this list.

I am extremely happy that Poland, right after Finland and Germany, recognized the digital culture of the demoscene as immaterial cultural heritage. It is a huge milestone, as it confirms on an institutional level that the demoscene is a major influence on digital culture east and west, north and south, crossing all borders and boundaries. We are super-grateful for the success of the Polish scene and community behind Kronika Polskiej Demosceny, which pushed the successful application with great passion and energy. Ogromne gratulacje!.

Success, what now?

For the demoscene, such a decision means first and foremost that its works hereby become an official part of culture, Polish and worldwide - this is no small thing. We can continue to develop, practice the traditions we like, and change the ones that no longer suit us over time, remaining a wonderfully wild, avant-garde subculture.

We have only one obligation, which hasn't changed over the years, to continue creating and continue passing on our customs to the next generation of people interested in demoscene.

Look at the history we're making, from early days of cracking, to harnessing not-so-obvious tools as means of fantastic expression, to laying the foundations for many of today's creative industries - and finally pioneering again, again in the field of digital culture, this time as a community whose quirky traditions and sometimes curiosity-driven creativity are internationally recognized as a significant contribution to humanity. Who would have expected that!

One of UNESCO's missions is to develop and implement legal norms, with particular emphasis on the protection of cultural heritage. Therefore, we can count on the protection of our works, collections and special skills from, let's call it mildly, unwanted commercialization by entities unrelated to the demoscene.

If we want, we can without a shadow of shame call our works - art.

And apart from that, in passing, we (we, the demoscene) contribute to a deeper understanding of the value of digital art and the craft involved in creating it.

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For the Committee, the success of the proposal means moving on to the next steps and more time to continue projects that have been started.

All the time we conduct historical research on the beginnings of demoscene, which is led by Łukasz "Zenial" Szałankiewicz. We also support Daniel "dely" Kozminski in his work on a monograph of Atari demoscene.

We have established cooperation with the Jagiellonian University, and we are in talks with researchers from the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, University of Turku in Finland, University of Zurich in Switzerland, and University of New South Wales in Australia. As early as the beginning of 2022, the first studies of our research results should be published.

Daniel "dely" Koźmiński, Przemysław "Tiges" Ostrowski and Bartosz "Biter" Rakowski are building a collection of high quality recordings of Polish demos. In doing so, we design a system for video analysis and develop ways to present the production in terms of emulation, including through the browser. We are of course of the opinion that nothing can replace experiencing demos on the hardware for which they were written, but at the same time we feel the need to popularize the art of demoscene through various channels (among other things to lure more people who will enrich the demoscene with their skills).

As we work to preserve the artifacts of digital culture, we look with curiosity at the government portal Chronicles@, which is being launched.

We also support the efforts of committees from other countries, including France, Denmark, and Switzerland, to have their demoscene listed on national digital cultural heritage lists, as part of the Art of Coding initiative.

We take this opportunity to remind you that the Committee is not only very busy, but also inclusive and open to collaboration. If anyone would like to assist us in our ongoing activities, please feel free to contact us. Give us now only a few weeks for Christmas, cooling down after the success of the proposal and planning the official activities - there is no shortage of work and every enthusiastic pair of hands is worth its weight in gold :)

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Andrzej Lichnerowicz and Kaja Mikoszewska would like to thank all the people who supported the creation of the application for the inclusion of the demoscene in the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, in particular the Manager of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Team, Ms. Katarzyna Sadowska-Mazur, and the European Commission's Digital Leader, Mr. Grzegorz Zajączkowski.

Łukasz Szałankiewicz would like to thank the people who supported the consultations during the creation of the archive of demoscene works and the development of their historical context, in particular representatives of the scenes of specific platforms: Tomasz and Piotr Pacyna, Daniel Koźmiński, Adam Wacławski, Bartosz Rakowski, Krystian Włosek and Adam Sobczak.

Applause for our partners! Organizations and institutions supporting the Committee's activities to preserve and cultivate demoscene traditions (which are now officially part of the national cultural heritage!).