pouët.net

..England, USA, Japan?
Ok about USA, there is a small scene (Are there any demoparties today btw?) and the distances beetween each other are high, perhaps that's a reason..
Japan? They have so many nice game/anime designers but why not demoscene..
And if it is because these 2 countries are far away from Europe, the demoscene culture center..
..then what about England? It's close and there are a lot of game developers there. There are programmers, but why not a demoscene? At least, Psychic Link and Valhalla were good back then but what is happening today? If I travel in a foreign country in few months from now, I won't choose UK, cause I also want to be able to visit some party and find some sceners..
Diferrent cultures perhaps? Do people get early jobs in game companies and don't want to spend their youth in coding something that does not sell? What are the reasons? What do you say???

because they are smart

As a friend of mine once said, "Europe values culture, but North America only values value itself."

thom, your friend got it so very very right =)

We are always said the long distances explain the lack of scene in the USA... but look at Russia, the country is even bigger and there's quite a big scene over there, with many demoparties happening.
So I guess the true reasons are more cultural.

Japanese have this Windows100% magazine with a demoscene section. I think they've got a scene of their own. They've got doujinshi conventions(doujinshi = manga drawn by fans).

i don't know about english scene with own parties and stuff, but indeed pretty much amiga sceners sit in england... like devistator/dcs and darkus/asl^ex-hjb and some more artists out of the aerosol clique... england used to have also great bbs's too, like zoltrix' "spaced out".

USA have had a very strong pc ansi scene. one of the most memorable textmode art groups, ACiD, is hailing from the US (though they are doing nothing worth checking out nowadays). there used to be also many pc ansi based bbs's in usa too. but, afaik, there was never a strong amiga scene in the US; for example i don't know any memorable amiga ascii artist from the states, as at the same time europe brought forth ascii genii like mogue, h2o, metalbasher, maz, redskin, exocet (not the pouet one=) and many others...

sorry to break your story dipswitch but ascii + ansi scene has almost nil intersection with the demoscene ;)

How is the demoscene in Canada?

How is the demoscene in Canada?

How is the demoscene in Italy?

optimus: more research before you talk would be good..

dipswitch: get a grip and forget this stupid ansi already

dixan: you rule

all others: remember to vote

Young Optimus, you have a lot to learn...

" ": perhaps not, but why seeing things so narrow ? i think we should rather talk about a general "scene", or "creative scene" if you like (to put the border between computer scene that creates, and computer scene that just puts the latesz w/\rez on the ftps). with such definition, you can put "demoscene" as well as netmusic/tracking scene and textmode art scene under one hat.
and more for the "intersection", you might not forget that textmode art sceners a) are often active in the "demoscene" and b) serve, at least partially, the demoscene. for a), just to stick to the handles i listed above, darkus is aswell mag-editor for several amiga demogroups, devistator is musician for dcs, h2o makes pixelgfx for paradox... or for another examples of ascii/ansi artists active in the scene that you think pouet.net is only made for, just take the black maiden crew i'm part of: avenger, pandur and poti are heavily involved in demo creation aswell as demoparty organizing, although they were major ansi artists some years ago and still draw one or another ansi pic from time to time, and myself, of whom, without boasting, i can say to be one of the most active ascii artists in the past 4 years, am demo musician at black maiden and evoke demoparty organizer. so you see, the connection between the "demoscene" and textmode art people is not that non-present as you think; it would be rather cruel and unjustified to expell textmode art from its traditional connection to demo making. and think about some 4-5 years in the past, where bbs's were that usual way of spreading demoscene releases and every respectable demogroups had at least one bbs hq. who did did design the bbs interfaces ? we, the textmode artists... we always were part of the demo creating community, and we still serve the demoscene community as we can, though more and more demosceners are refusing it, forgetting an old tradition...

by your reasoning, we should be including web designers.

you're forgetting one important factor: the purpose of creativity. by "creative scene" i certainly mean those who are working in traditions of the "scene" as we know it, formed over 15 years and still keeping people creative under the more-or-less same "flag". i neither include web designers as such, nor i do include those "ascii artists" who just build some figures out of dots, without any connection to our "scene" (and which diamondie seems to adore so much)... but if someone's job in scene is to design and maintain a website for a demogroup, and he's aware of scene and its goals and traditions, he's for sure part of it. same goes to scene portal maintainers, demoshow performers (hi crest!), party organizers and, last but not least, those who serve the demoscene community by creating textmode art for infofiles and bbs's; generally spoken, everybody who contributes to the whole process and environment of demo creating in traditions of the original computer scene spirit. you can't just reduce the demoscene to coders, gfx'ers and musicians, because they alone don't make it full.

well duh. what you are saying is pretty tautological. sceners are sceners.

the point was about including guys bearing the "ansi/ascii" flag without connection whatsoever with demos --

i, for my part, don't know ANY ascii artists "without connections whatsoever with demos". nearly every textmode artist is or was involved in demoscene (or early wares-scene, which the demoscene of today offsprings from). so when i talk about ansi/ascii-artists as "sceners", you can be sure they've got something to do with "our" scene. the point is, who are those ascii artists without connections to demoscene ? there are none, except for those newsgroup-nakedtits-in-ascii-pixelers who aren't aware of our scene at all and of whom i am certainly NOT talking.

but to return to my first posting in this thread, why do you think that what i've said has absolutely no relevance on the original topic ? first of all, optimus wasn't asking about "demoscene" in that narrowminded definition that some people want to be doctrine, he asked about "scene" meaning computerscene as we know and practice it, including (as i understand it) bbs-trading scene, mailswappers and all that stuff that made present demoscene as it is.

and second point is, there is no such thing as "ascii scene" or smth. what do we do ? logos. for whom ? for the computer scene, as well for the legal as for the illegal part. so there's not only a connection between scenish textmode art and "demoscene", but a one-sided symbiosis. scenish textmode art has not only a "somewhat connection" to the demoscene and the illegal scene, but is bound to it. when textmode artists will have noone to draw but for themselves, the artform will die, as already happened to the pc ansi scene due to dying of pcboard bbs's.

hey dipswitch, you know being an ascii artist was only a side activity for me.. i`m also a musician.. and i organised some groups.. plus had my own diskmag :) and erm.. just kinda hung around these last few years!

darkus, yeah, that's what i'm talking about !

dips: your reasoning is wonderful.
to follow your trend, we should be discussing röyksopp in here. Both since they used to track, and since the musical world as we know it ALSO use the word scene for their underground projects ("how weird").

start your own ascii thread, dip :)

if you're aware of the demoscene and contribute to it somehow, then you're a scener.

so, ansi/ascii makers, trackers and webdesigners who know of the demoscene, maybe follow it ocasionaly, attend demoparties and release on labels with a connection to the scene (netlabels which get greeted on demos for example) are sceners.

if they release stuff ocasioanly, but couldnt care less about demoparties and any of the demo hype shit, then they arent sceners.

the problem is once a scener you're always a scener, so its fucked up to know if a guy who did ansi for a release on a small netlabel that died 6 months after it was born and got a hello to its founder on some obscure demo that placed 3rd last on some compo somewhat maybe related to the demoscene (couz some other sceners also participated), is a scener nowdays or not.

either way, usa, canada, italy and japan have a scene.
they just arent that active because they are smart.

Thanks all for your really interesting answers, and Leia, I wasn't claiming there is no scene, I just wondered and that's why I asked. Now, some parts of this thread is the research for me :)