Why?

The historical heritage of what was once the “illegal”, “pirate”, or “cracking” scene, and what evolved later on into the “demoscene” – it is not just digital. Think of party flyers. Think of swap letters. Think of scene papermags. Think of disk covers and group stickers. And while our digital legacy is safely stored, the scene’s material artefacts are permanently endangered. Imagine your parents cleaning out their basement and throwing away your old stuff. What if the papermag in that box was the last existing copy on Earth?

How?

To prevent this impending loss of the scene’s material heritage, we call on sceners to rummage through their stash and to look for paper artefacts. As part of a historical research project that explores the history of the  scene in the 1980s and early 1990s, and in cooperation with scene.org, demozoo.org, and mags.c64.org, we want to facilitate high quality scans of your old scene materials and make sure they are preserved for future generations. We are looking for papermags, flyers, scene stickers, swap letters, wristbands, party/group t-shirts, and other material artefacts particularly from the 1980s, but also from later periods of scene history. Please get in touch if you have any materials you would like to share. You can send your items to us by post, which we scan in Zurich and make sure they reach you back safely. If you consider your items too precious to be sent by post, we will surely find another solution. Also, you are more than welcome to facilitate the scans yourself – as long as they are in full colour (even with b/w materials) and have a resolution of 300 DPI.

The scans of your items will be stored in a dedicated archive at scene.org, including metadata on the items’ history and their donators. Items related to the C64 scene will be additionally passed on to mags.c64.org. Incoming additions will be posted here.