Author Archives: gotpapers

C64 Covers as Naïve Art

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 updates, 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.

• Accept disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Two Acme disk covers by Hanni, 1995 [metadata1] [metadata2]
• Creatures disk cover by Franco, 1992 [metadata]
• Crossdome disk cover by Madrom, 1995 [metadata]
• Digital Art disk cover by Xonix, 1994 [metadata]
• Dinomania disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Disk cover by JJ, 1996 [metadata]
• Error 2000 disk cover by S.U.C.K., 1996 [metadata]
• Logiker disk cover by Logiker, 1993 [metadata]
• Nasti Boy disk cover by Nasti Boy, 1994 [metadata]
• Plutonium disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Reiners Public Domain disk cover, 1994 [metadata]
• Secret Lab Productions disk cover by Cosmo, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Greenhorn, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Greenhorn & Logiker, 1993 [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Little John, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Disk #29 disk cover, 1996 [metadata]
• World D-Sign disk cover by Fan-TC, 1994 [metadata]

Ancient C64/Amiga Pirate Materials #2

Here is the second batch of materials provided by an anonymous contributor (click here for the first instalment). 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.

• Letter from CCC/Firesoft Inc. (Belgium) to undisclosed recepient, around 1986 [metadata]
• Cleveland Distribution Service sticker, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Commando Frontier sticker, between 1987 and 1989 [metadata]
• Dominators business card, between 1986 and 1989 [metadata]
• D.S. Compware sticker sheet, between 1986 and 1987 [metadata]
• Italian Spreading Service sticker, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Plutonium Crackers sticker sheet, around 1986 [metadata]
• Soldiers Against Protection sticker, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• Stars promo card, 1986 [metadata]
• The Fall Guys business card, 1987 [metadata]
• The Light Circle rubber stamp, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Organized Crime sticker, between 1987 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Orgasmatron Crew sticker sheet, 1987 [metadata]
• The Warriors 1881 sticker, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Wizards sticker, around 1987 [metadata]
• Unknown cartoon cutout, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Warfalcons disk cover, around 1987-1988 [metadata]

Mixed Bag of Parties

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.

• Acrise & Excess Party 1996 invitation [metadata]
• Bizarre 1999 badge [metadata]
• Evoke 2000 votedisk [metadata]
• Scene Event 2002 badge [metadata]
• Scene Event 2004 badge [metadata]
• SILIConvention 1997 flyer [metadata]
• SILIConvention 1997 brochure [metadata]
• Sun’n’Fun Conference 1992 newspaper article [metadata]
• Sun’n’Fun Conference 1993 invitation [metadata]
• Symposium 1996 invitation [metadata]
• The Gathering 1996 invitation [metadata]
• The Party 2000 brochure [metadata]
• The Party 2000 prize money envelope [metadata]
• The Party 2000 writsband [metadata]
• TRSI Easter Conference 1992 invitation [metadata]
• Warf Meeting 2 (1997) invitation [metadata]
• X 1995 invitation [metadata]

C64 Swap Letters (Dr. Science Collection)

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!

• Peter Venkman/Mega Industries business card, early 1990s [metadata]
• Fairlight disk cover by Hobbit, 1990 [metadata]
• Trance disk cover by Twist, 1993 [metadata]
• X-Factor disk cover by Brady, 1990 (unfolded scan) [metadata]
• Computer Freaks Association greeting list, 1990 [metadata]

Letters:

• Agemixer to Dr. Science, 15 June 1995 [metadata]
• Boss to Dr. Science, 19 December 1989 [metadata]
• Cruze to Dr. Science, 19 February 1992 [metadata]
• Fake to Dr. Science, early 1990s [metadata]
• Snap to Dr. Science, December 1993 [metadata]