Revision 2023

Back to the E-Werk for Most, First Time for Me

After nearly three long years of distance and postponed events, the moment I stepped into the E-Werk for the Revision 2023 demoparty, I was swept up in radiant waves of sheer enthusiasm. Others were back, I was there for the first time. This is my account of a big, loud, and joyful weekend in Saarbrücken.

April 2023

The main hall during compos was packed with energy.

I had no idea what I was getting into, when I decided to attend Revision 2023.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the basics. The demoscene is a creative subculture built around crafting real-time audiovisual productions. These are called demos. They are purely for artistic and technical merit, with no commercial purpose. Programmers, graphic artists, and musicians collaborate to push hardware to its limits, squeezing breathtaking visuals and music out of everything from vintage 8-bit machines to modern GPUs. A demoparty is a gathering where sceners meet in person to compete, collaborate, and celebrate this craft: entries are submitted to competitions (compos), shown on a big screen, and voted on by attendees.

Think of it as part hackathon, part art festival, part very loud concert. And all of it a wholy unique experience that you can't really understand until you see it for yourself.

Getting to Saarbrücken from Vienna by train was a bit of a chore. I had to catch multiple connections, find the right platforms, and endure that familiar long-distance feeling of being suspended between cities. But eventually Saarbrücken drew closer. I felt how the travel fatigue faded and I began to feel wonderful anticipation.

Back to the E-Werk in Saarbrücken.

After the long, suspended years of the pandemic, simply being there, among people, under open skies, felt genuinely miraculous. Stepping out into the open, the sunlight seemed warmer than I remembered. It was almost generous. The air felt new, rinsed clean, as if the world had rebooted. Even ordinary things like the pavement, river water, passing cars, seemed to glitter with a kind of rediscovered possibility.

I know it sounds pathetic. I feel that Revision was not just a demoparty! It was a kind of liberation. A return to movement. To presence. To life shared in the same physical space.

Workspaces where ideas turned into demos and graphics.

The E-Werk in Saarbrücken

The E-Werk is a former power plant that is used as an event location these days. It sits in a commercial area at the edge of Saarbrücken.

I wouldn't call it a particularly picturesque part of town. The actual location is surrounded by a half-hearted attempt at a shopping mall that includes a standard Mediamarkt electronics store, a market for home improvement and a discount supermaket. They are cradled by warehouses, train tracks, and functional buildings. From the outside, it feels almost industrial and unassuming. To be fair, that contrast is part of its charm. Inside, the E-Werk transforms into a cathedral of pixels and sounds.

To be fair, close-by you can find a trace of computing history in the form of a street named after Konrad Zuse, the German computer pioneer.

The main hall is enormous. The stage is lit worthy of a concert. The sheer space available for the nearly thousand participants just feels monumental.

Rows of workspaces and glowing screens in the main hall.

The motto of Revision 2023 was "Back to the E-Werk". And that was more than a note on the in-person nature. Even though I was there for the very first time, I think we were all returning to a place that has become part of the German demoscene's collective memory. The upbeat techno-like song that played during the opening ceremony, with the catchy yell of the refrain "Back to the E-Werk", was a true anthem for the moment.

Revision Recap Video

You can get a great sense of the atmosphere from the official Revision 2023 aftermovie, which captures the electricity in the air and the excitement of the participants.

Watch Revision 2023 Recap Video on Youtube

Staying in the City

I stayed at Motel-One near the Saarland State Theatre, right in the more elegant, central part of town. It was a pleasant contrast: classical architecture, quiet streets, and the Saar flowing nearby. Quite the different world from the electric hall of Revision. (Some folks actually slept at the party location E-Werk in the area behind the projection screen.)

My view of Saarbrücken from Motel-One.

The E-Werk, however, was on the other side of town. To get there, I would usually grab a Lime or Tier scooter and rode across the city. It was quite a trip! I had to glide along the river, and then through industrial stretches. Luckily, I was not the only one doing it. This meant that late at night there would be enough scooters lined up outside the E-Werk for most folks to grab one.

For other participants the organizers had arranged a shuttle bus that ran between the city center, the official hotel and the E-Werk. It was a nice touch, but not much use to me because I was staying at a different hotel. Also the scooter rides added a bit of adventure to the whole experience.

Size matters

I just have to say it again, Revision was enormous. I had attended my first demoparty only the year before at Evoke 2022 in Cologne. While Evoke felt welcoming and intimate, Revision felt like a bustling capital city of the demoscene. Rows upon rows of tables. The constant pounding of exciting music. Oldskool and newschool systems sitting side by side. I loved it, but I was also overwhelmed by it.

Another thing was very different at Revision: there were so many competitions that the submitted entries had to be constantly screened.

Projecting the Revision logo onto the ceiling.

My Entry: The Unseen Threat

I wanted to submit more than I did. I always do. But my plans dissolved. I only managed to submit one Amiga graphic for the Oldskool Graphics competition: The Unseen Threat. This was an Amiga low-res graphic at 320 x 200 (the NTSC standard) with a 32-color palette.

I had been working on it during my train ride, and I felt it was a good representation of my style and what I wanted to express. I started out drawing it on my iPad Pro with the Pencil in Procreate. Then I exported it as a GIF that I could import in Deluxe Paint on TheA500mini I had prepared to boot into Workbench using Aminimiga. I had to do some manual cleanup and then color and dither it with the Amiga's palette and resolution.

Of course, I could only do the last step once I had set everything up at Revision. I must say that I quite enjoyed the process.

Steps of the Painting Process

Step 5: Final coloring and dithering

The final graphic was a dwarf-like figure sitting next to a giant mushroom smoking a pipe. Unbeknownst to the dwarf, a small creature was hiding on top of the mushroom, observing the scene. I'd like to think it was trying to decide whether to eat the dwarf. The title "Unseen Threat" was meant to capture that moment of tension and uncertainty.

My setup for creating the artwork.

I think I only managed to upload the finished image with the necessary steps just in time for the deadline. It did feel a bit like sending a message in a bottle into a roaring sea. Revision's competitions are fierce, because the level of quality is intimidatingly high.

Seeing my piece appear on the big screen during the screening was surreal. All the tiny pixels suddenly looked larger than life. And I'd like to think that many of the folks who looked at it understood exactly what went into creating the graphic.

Proud when my work appeared on the big screen.

It's Not FOMO If You Really Miss Out!

There was one competition I really would have liked to have participated in. This is called the paintover graphic. There, participants are given a base image with a mess of abstract shapes and colors and they have to draw their own interpretation over it.

But I didn't manage it in time. This time round, the deadline won. I was hoping to return some day and give it a shot, because it looked like a lot of fun.

Next time! Definitely next time!

This was the base image for the paintover compo. It looked like a lot of fun.

Hearing Voices

The competitions were not only screened live in the vast hall of the E-Werk, they were also streamed to the world.

Sir Garbagetruck, Subi, and Ziphoid provided wonderful commentaries. They sounded really professional, like listening to a radio station. A bit like sports commentators. They really managed to strike a balance between being playful and knowledgeable about the demoscene and the technology used.

The moderators explained the context for newcomers, adding insider tidbits for veterans, and reacting in real time to glitches as they happened (inevitable at an event this size).

Even while sitting in the hall, I'd occasionally tune in to their commentary running alongside just for funsies.

Classic Amiga hardware, still deeply loved.

Seminars: Godzilla and the Future of the Scene

Since I made it to the E-Werk a bit too late on my scooter, I missed the seminar How to scene for beginners by Lambdacore. I was a little annoyed with myself about that. But I had another kind of "beginner course" already behind me: attending Evoke 2022. So I knew that I could sign-in to the party system, see the compo entries, vote for them and submit my own entries. (And I also missed the apparently legendary Belgian Beer Seminar by FRaNKy)

Fortunately, I did make it to psykon's fun seminar The History of Visual Effects told through the Godzilla Franchise. It was exactly what I hoped it would be: a good bit of fun looking at people in rubber suits and making fun of some of the later incarnations of the gigantic atomic lizard.

I also attended the talk by kudrix of Echtzeitkultur: Quo vadis, Demoscene? From Underground to Broadway, possibly. He explored a bit of a provocative idea: Does the scene have to stay underfunded forever? He argued that we might be gradually getting into a position where we can reach for the stars. He shared insights into the options to acquire more scene funding, without losing the spirit that makes the scene what it is.

Another big theme that kept surfacing in conversations was AI. Since last year, it had exploded onto the scene with GitHub Copilot, Dall-E, and ChatGPT. People were actively debating how to tell whether someone had used AI in their pictures or their code. In graphics, you might still spot certain tells, but in code that question is so much harder to answer.

I had experimented with AI-generated graphics and text while creating my Mansion of Trepidation game. AI really enables us to do so much. I wonder where we're heading with it.

Pinball and arcade fun between compos.

Arcade machines added to the playful atmosphere.

Letting Loose

One of the really cool moments for me was the hour-long live set by h0ffman. He is a legendary demoscener, DJ, musician, and long-time contributor to demoscene music culture. He absolutely owned the decks and the speakers, turning the Revision dance floor in front of the stage into a sea of movement.

So do I!

Spread across the event there were other concerts and DJ sets as well by flopine, Throno Crigger, dojoe, MadTixx, dritter, messy, and others. After so many hours of sitting, working, and watching compos, it felt incredible to just dance, let loose to the mix of the electronic energy they curated. The loud music, the flashing lights, and the crowd all surrendering to the rhythm created a wonderful atmosphere

The dance floor came alive during the DJ sets.

Friendly Fire

Outside, as the mild spring evenings settled in, we could have some cold beer and have some warm conversations in the tent outside. Food stands were set up for us, their aromas mixing with the night air.

This was actually quite a welcome break from the intensity of the hall. And then there was the campfire, a perfect gathering spot where we could sit, talk, and decompress under the stars.

Simply beautiful!

Late-night conversations around the fire.

I also missed a morning on the second day: there was a friendly long distance run through town and the surroundings of the E-Werk. I think I might have been too tired and hung over to participate. Or maybe I only found out once I came back to the venue.

The MEGA65 made a strong impression on me with its dance-related message.

Coding is Life!

I certainly didn't want to miss the live coding competitions.

Imagine competitive programming, but instead of a quiet room and a cup of coffee, you're on a stage with club-level sound pressure, a giant screen behind you, and several hundred sceners watching your cursor blink.

That was my first encounter with live shader coding and live Pico-8 coding.

Live coding on stage: thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.

Live shader coding is essentially real-time sorcery. The contestants start with a blank fragment shader. This is a tiny program that runs for every pixel on the screen. Then, line by line, they start building shapes and motion. Suddenly the screen blossoms into pulsating tunnels, neon landscapes, or fractal hallucinations. It's the pure magic of math turned into visuals, but performed like a DJ set. To add to the challenge, mistakes and syntax errors are projected on the 10-meter-high screen for everyone to see.

Live Pico-8 coding is similar in spirit, but more retro-flavored. Pico-8 is a "fantasy console", meaning it mimics the constraints of an old 8-bit machine. Limited resolution. Limited palette. Limited memory. You code graphics, sound, and logic live, often in Lua. The result might be a tiny demo or a procedural effect. I find it just looks charming!

And let's not forget add the stage factor.

Coding live under those conditions is a very special challenge. First, there's the music. It's loud. Not background-loud. Proper demoparty loud. The kind where your internal monologue has to shout over the kick drum. The contestants were trying to remember the correct commands while the subwoofer was rearranging their internal organs.

Second, there's the audience. Hundreds of people. Many of them far better coders themselves. They see every typo. Every missing semicolon. Every time the contestants inadvertently break their demo. On a projector the size of a small house.

And then there's the clock.

Live coding compos are timed. The contestants don't have the luxury of refactoring. They don't get to say, "Let me just clean this up". No. They hack. They improvise. And maybe they even pretend that some glitches were intentional.

I admire the folks who do this. For me, they are programmers, performance artist, and controlled chaos magicians all rolled into one!

Beholding Greatness

PS of Enough Records organized and presented the live coding competitions. He is a legendary scener known for his regular Demoscene Report on YouTube. He guided the audience through the battle making some of densest programming wizardry accessible. This year, Musk, Flopine, Molive, totetmatt, nusan, evvvvil and cosamentale stepped onto the stage and turned code into spectacle. I just have to say it again: I have deep respect for them. Just getting up there and doing this in front of such a crowd already feels like a victory.

In the first qualifier, Flopine was voted the winner. evvvvil won the second qualifier, and totetmatt won the third. In the finals, evvvvil took the victory, with Flopine and totetmatt following closely behind. (Not sure how someone so good can be called "evvvvil" though.)

I was astonished by the greatness I beheld. This is the demoscene at its best: not just what you create, but how you create it!

Shader Showdown results after an intense live battle.

Here are the two parts of the demoscene report by PS about Revision 2023 he recorded after the event:

Watch Part 1 of the Revision 2023 Demoscene Report by PS on Youtube

Watch Part 2 of the Revision 2023 Demoscene Report by PS on Youtube

The Works I Loved

If you want to get a full picture of all the entries, please find the compo results here on Demozoo: Revision 2023 results. There were so many beautiful and wonderfully inspiring works that picking favorites feels almost like an injustice. However, some results in particular caught me completely off guard: in separate competitions, I found myself drawn more to the second-place entry than the winner. This isn’t a critique of the actual champions. Just a sign of the staggering quality bar this year. (And probably typical for most years at Revision for all I know.)

Percolating Pixels: the Oldskool Graphics Compo

In the Oldskool Graphics (Amiga OCS/ECS) category, my heart belonged to Soulmates Never Die by Slayer of Ghosttown. While it took second place behind the technically impressive The Watchmaker, there is an emotional gravity to it that I couldn't shake. The work features a remarkable palette of reds and oranges that seem to bleed across the entire canvas... from the hazy sky to the lady’s hair and the warmth surrounding her faithful canine companion. What a great use of the Amiga's 32 color palette!

It is beautifully rendered, certainly, but the subject matter is what truly touched me, it is just so tender and a bit melancholic. For me it is a highlight not just in technical craft, but in pure feeling.

I kneel before Slayer and worship them as a true master of pixel art!

Soulmates Never Die by Slayer of Ghosttown

A similar sentiment struck me during the Amiga Demo (AGA) competition. While Blood Sugar Rises claimed the top spot, it was the runner-up, Neocolora by Darkage and Lemon, that I kept thinking about long after the stream ended. It hits that elusive "sweet spot" where fantastic visuals meet a haunting, atmospheric soundtrack. The demo feels confident, ftylish, and just a little bit unreal.

A digital fever dream. Like a retinal imprint of the cosmos!

No Holds Barred: the PC Demo Compo

However, when it came to the most extreme category, the PC Demo competition, there was no internal debate. I absolutely adored the winner: Mechasm by the absolute demoscene legends Fairlight. This production is of genuine motion-picture quality, offering a slightly abstract, mesmerizing visualization of artificial androids being created and exerting their will upon their surroundings. It is utterly polished and unsettling. And I have no idea how they even did it.

This is a stunning work of contemporary art.

Watch Mechasm by Fairlight on Youtube

Legends in the Crowd

At times a party as large as Revision made me feel anonymous. There were rare moments when I stood in the crowd and felt a bit lonely. Just one person among many, watching the big screen, surrounded by noise and movement. Then the shyness would rear its ugly head. Maybe even some imposter syndrome like I should not be here at all.

Fortunately, those moments of loneliness never lasted long.

I'd like to think it was only a temporary disconnect. Maybe from exhaustion, maybe from a drink too many. Gradually it would turn to happiness because I'd regain the feeling of being part of the crowd.

Writer Alan Moore once came up with the concept of ideaspace.

He described it as an interconnected, real, non-physical dimension where ideas, archetypes, stories, and fictional characters actually exist. And we all occasionally tap into it. Some of us when we dream, some of us when we are inventing stories. Some of us more often than others.

Maybe there is a special part of ideaspace devoted to the demoscene. When we tap into it, we feel elevated and empowered to create.

Perhaps you have to be disconnect sometimes because staying in ideaspace too long could drive you mad. (Memo to self: enough with the pathos!)

The People Behind the Legends

I met a lot of people, including Harvey, the scener who gave me such a great introduction at Evoke 2022. He had stand where he sold joysticks, books, and other retro gaming accessories.

Beneath the E-Werk, a corridor stretches across the foundations. It is the mythical "toilet corridor". And it leads to a surprisingly large number of toilets. In this corridor, I bumped into Melkor of Haujobb, one of the initiators for the Art of Coding project. This is the initiative to enlist the demoscene as first digital culture on the list of UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage.

We started a conversation. Since he is one of the organisers of the Evoke demoparty, he might have seen me there. I was a bit star-struck because the Art of Coding initiative was one of the motivating factors for me to write my master's thesis about the demoscene and start going to demoparties. Oddly enough we spoke in English even though German is both of our native language. At some point I didn't dare change the language because it would break the spell.

Though then I needed to go to the bathroom so urgently, I had to leave. And later on, it never seemed like the right time to continue the conversation. Maybe if I had not disconnected from the demoscene corner of ideaspace for a moment...

After PS had finished hosting and organizing the live coding events, I managed to exchange some words with him. I was so happy to meet him in person. He is one of the peopls who really hold the whole scene together with his regular demoscene reports on Youtube.

It's one of the great joys of demoparties that I could meet the people behind the handles.

People I regarded as distant legends. Here they were real people I could talk to. And learn from.

A Rewarding Experience

I also had the privilege to see the Meteoriks scene awards for the first time. They were presented by dojoe. They really played up the award ceremony to resemble the Oscars and celebrated demoscene highlights of 2022: two hosts dressed for the occasion, a beautiful prize and acceptance speeches. But they were always a bit tongue in cheek too.

And how the room was full of love during the awards!

Of couse, my attention was so captured that I didn't take many photos of the actual awards ceremony. I only managed to snap a few shots as all the Meteoriks winners and organizers just left the stage.

My only shot of the Meteoriks awards ceremony... Just as they left the stage!

Meeting the Scanline

One of my favorite encounters was with a Swede I sat next to in the first two days: chellomere of Desire. We talked about Nintendo Entertainment System graphics, and the display engine he coded that used palette switching on certain scanlines. This was a technical trick that allowed the use of many more colors on the screen than the NES normally allowed. Together with Visionvortex, they submitted the oldskool graphic Back To Desire for the NES.

Listening to him explain the thinking behind it was like getting a mini-masterclass in the scene's core philosophy: constraints are not a prison, they are an instrument. (I don't think I came up with this phrase, I'm sure I read it somewhere on pouet.net, demozoo.org, or heard it at a demoparty.)

chellomere's setup: the laptop was connected to the NES to program it and the display output of the NES was connected back to the laptop using a device used to capture and digitize analog security camera footage.

Back in the Future

By the end of the weekend I was exhausted, but it was a good kind of exhaustion! I had so many new impressions, wonderful conversations, and a good helping of inspiration packed into a few days.

Revision 2023 was my first time experiencing the scene at this scale. It was loud and dazzling and sometimes lonely. It was technically astonishing. And it reminded me why I love this culture of code, pixels, and stubborn passion.

Retro beauty: a Commodore 16 at Revision.

What really struck me, was how impressive the level of organization at Revision was. Despite the packed schedule of dozens of competitions across multiple days, there were only few delays. The live streaming infrastructure must have been really well thought out. After all, the streaming crew didn't only have to run the demos on modern PCs but also on vintage hardware, which can be quite unpredictable.

And then there were logistical aspects like the shuttle service, the food stands, and the campfire. They really thought of every detail through. Even the mini-events within tbe larger event like the Meteoriks Awards and the live-coding competitions. And even the the seminars that were more of a side-program ran without a hitch (at least the ones I managed to visit).

Running an event of this scale, with close to a thousand attendees and entries spanning every platform from the Commodore 64 to cutting-edge OpenGL shaders, is an enormous undertaking. The organizers pulled it off with a competence that made the whole weekend feel professional, even though I suspect the reality behind the scenes was anything but. A huge, heartfelt thanks to everyone who gave their time and energy to make Revision 2023 happen.

The organization team really gave the scene a home to come back to.

A Schneider laptop with a fully functioning gas-plasma screen. A sight to behold.

The train ride back felt shorter. Somewhere between Saarbrücken and Vienna, I scrolled through photos, results, and memories. I had only submitted one graphic. And I might have missed a compo and many seminars. And yet I had gained a much larger understanding of the demoscene... back at the E-Werk.

I learned that the demoscene is not only an escape from reality (a very welcome one at that) but it is a jump into marvelous different aspect of this reality. We needed that. A lot.

Dazed and Confused in Saarbrücken

I should be honest about one thing: this report is a bit of a jumble.

I was overwhelmed by Revision 2023 in the best possible way. That showed in how I processed it afterwards. Instead of a clean day-by-day breakdown following the schedule, what you got was a stream of impressions and memories in roughly the order they surfaced (I hope). I apologize for that. For my next demoparty report I want to do things properly: a structured account organized by day and anchored to the actual schedule. I also want to record some of the lessons I learned from participating. I just wasn't ready for that level of detail yet. Revision 2023 was too new, too large, and too alive to pin down neatly. I hope that's fine for a first time.

All that being said, I know one thing for certain: I would be back at Revision in the E-Werk (not sure when, not sure how).

And next time not as a wide-eyed visitor. But I hope as someone who belongs there.

Brainstorm's brilliant C64 SID music setup from the Revision floor.

Me at Revision 2023 — grateful to be there.