From crackers to artists Everyone knows LAN-Parties: a bunch of teenagers meets in a hall for some days, where all computers they bring with them are connected to a LAN in order to play games. An amatuer might not see the difference to a Demoparty. Also here the scenery is dominated by computers and monitors, but instead of playing people create. "Demos" are small, graphical programs with music that origin from the cracker-scene of the 80ies. The crackers were cracking the copy protection of games as a "sport". As a visiting-card they added a demo to the cracked game - some kind of a multimedia-graffiti. The demoscene doesn't have something to do with this illegal work anymore since a long time, says Andreas Schilling (rem: StyX), who organizes together with five friends the first demoparty in Spiegelberg near Stuttgart on the last weekend. "There are also young people that use their computer for other things than just playing games" says 19 year old Schilling, who is currently doing his civil service. "Gamers" were explicitly not accepted. Girls were just paying half the entrance-fee. "Sure, the party is also alot about meeting and not just sitting in front of the computer" explains Schilling. Anyways, people also work hard, because the party was a competition as well. The expected 60 multimedia-freaks had to finish their creations until a certain deadline. Most of them started their work already some time before the event, the creation of a demo can last up to several months. But it's also part of the cult to finish the demos at the party, where they are first presented "live" to an audience and also become rated. There are no prices yet, honour is more important, means Schilling. The scene is spread in whole Europe, the biggest demoparty takes place in Finland. At such events there are also sometimes headhunters from Multimedia-companies, that look out for young talents. As and example the graphics of the game "Tomb Raider" were done by a demoscener, explains Schilling. On their various scene-websites the programmers offer their creations for free and do also not care about them being spread, as long as they are not used commercially or become altered. In fact they're about spreading their own "visiting card".