..________
..__ _______ ________ _____..
-- _____ _..___ ____ / / -
-- / / _/_ / --
- /____/ _______ __..__ ____ / ---
________ _ _________/______/
.. .. _______../ ++ xplsv


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n-0505
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blackpawn, ryiinn, kirill, trace

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Blah blah blah...
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blackpawn on the making of n-0505
(written after no sleep for many days!!)

it's been many months since xplsv's epic
collaboration with the northern dragons on
the textmode demo clockwerck. after
brilliant dancing ascii people and gears
where can a scener's career possibly go
next?? while trace and sole have been busy
with java and macs i've been quite busy
myself with consuming tacos. then i
decided a production was in order for the
nvidia demo party (hey free hardware is
nice). trent reznor pleaded for his fans to
make visuals for his latest tunes which he
released as creative commons and i had
effects in the works and so a demo was born!

this has been quite a fun collaboration
with the amazing graphician ryiinn, the
elite 3d modeller kirill and of course the
world famous trace. unlike past productions
this was made without the help of a fancy
tool and instead everything is laboriously
hard coded. hopefully the result is nice.
as usual tons of the demo has been created
at the party place with no sleeping! i'm
looking forward to sleeping today after the
submission deadline and some interesting
presentations.

i hope you enjoy our contribution to the
nvscene demo party.


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Ryiinn on the creation of n-0505
(random trivia ftw)

The concepts behind n-0505 were inspired by
too many long nights of horror movie
marathons and a desire to set some
awesomely weird stuff to a kick-ass track.
Although it went through many (many)
iterations of "omg wouldn't it be sweet if
we did....", the final idea of unleashing
a plague on nvision was the one that stuck.

We had a hell of a time naming this demo
because nothing we came up with really
seemed to fit. I spent weeks poring over
virology texts and other biology
dictionaries, and just kept coming up
empty-handed. Since medical terms weren't
working out, we flipped our thinking to one
of my odd fascinations - plagues. Through a
convoluted research path, I stumbled across
a Homeric reference to the Nosoi - the Greek
spirits of pestilence and disease. The
transliteration of this name is "Nosos". We
really liked the parallel to Pandora's Box,
since that's essentially what we imagined
the scientists in our lab opening. We had a
winner. To make it sound more like a
specimen, we l337ed it up and converted it
into "n-0505". If anyone wonders, yeah, we
did joke about naming it "80085", but that
quickly got vetoed by everyone involved ;)

Random useless bit of trivia for the day: we
refer to the crazy leech tentacles in scene
five as the "Wigglesworth" effect. I blame
Red Bull for that bit of stupidity.


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Ryiinn on the decision to draw on ghosts for
inspiration (aka - the beauty of creative
commons).

Blackpawn and I both believe that all
information worth knowing is worth sharing
freely.

Taking knowledge and sharing it with another
person can inspire that individual to
develop abilities that may directly increase
the quality of life both for them and for
those around them. Regardless of one's age,
gender, location, financial status - to name
a few factors - nearly everyone finds things
that inspire them to learn, create, or
otherwise better themselves. If you publish
a single text and just one person reads that
piece and draws inspiration from it, and
then uses that inspiration to fuel another
creation or even a career, weren't you
indirectly responsible for that advancement?

It's the commitment to this ideal that
inspires blackpawn to serve free texts and
tools from his site, and it's what drives me
to contribute articles to wikis and other
open information sites.

Anyways. Let's get back to ghosts.

Blackpawn and I have been fans of Nine Inch
Nails and the music of Trent Reznor for well
over a decade. Not only is Trent a brilliant
artist, but he also shares the same passion
for using his music to inspire and foster
creativity in his community. Here's how.

On October 8, 2007, Trent posted an exciting
announcement on his blog. As of 2008, NIN
would enter a new era of interaction with
fans. As he put it, "I have been under
recording contracts for 18 years and have
watched the business radically mutate...it
gives me great pleasure to be able to
finally have a direct relationship with the
audience as I see fit and appropriate.."
(http://ninblogs.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/
big-news)

On October 19, 2007, Trent posted a really
interesting rant about how he's been unable
to officially aggregate fan remixes for his
music due record label issues. It's
interesting. Check it out here:
(http://ninblogs.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/
copyright-fun)

On October 27, 2007, Trent took a bold step
towards creative freedom and community
collaboration by opening
http://remix.nin.com. (As he posts on the
blog "Sometimes you just have to say..."fuck
it." The remix site is UP! Have fun.")

The site encouraged fans to take the raw
audio of Nine Inch Nails tracks, remix the
pieces, and re-upload them for the rest of
the community to evaluate, discuss, and
further remix into new creations.

While NIN still retained the base copyright
to their tunes, they were granting fans the
ability to take those professionally-created
pieces and use them in their own creative
ways. The only requirements? That no profit
was to be made from the homebrews and that
all new creations were to be tossed back
into the collective remix pool to further
power the cycle of collaboration.

Remix inspired a new generation of fans
(many of whom never had any exposure to
audio remixing) to check out the forums,
grab whatever audio program they could, and
learn a brand-new skill set just to
participate in the movement. Driven by the
raw pleasure of creation and fueled by the
encouragement of NIN and similar-minded
individuals, people began to develop their
own subculture around the free spirit of the
site. Kinda sounds like the demoscene's
ideals, doesn't it?

Most likely driven by the success of remix,
Trent took an even further step in the
direction of creative freedom with the
release of the Ghosts tracks
(http://ghosts.nin.com). For those
unfamiliar with the project, here are some
highlights.

These tracks were released for free on
nin.com. While you could purchase hard
copies if you wanted to, the first cd (in
total, there were four cds, or 36 tracks)
were made available for download directly
from the site.

These tracks were released under the
Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike
(NC-SA) license. This basically grants
individuals the right to use the pieces in
any creative, non-commercial way.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-sa/3.0/us)

On March 12, 2008, Trent posted a video to
YouTube
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=lYDUk0ESwt4),
explaining that the release of the Ghosts
tracks was an experiment. He challenged
people to take these tracks, create videos
and visuals based on them, and then upload
the new creations directly to an official
YouTube channel. Trent mentions in his
video that he'll be watching the entries to
this impromptu compo to see what people do
with them, and then figure out the next step
to take. The experiment may lead to an
independent Ghosts film festival or another
creative venue, but nothing concrete has
been released at this time.

As of August 25, 2008 there have been over
1800 entries uploaded to the NIN hosts
channel, and the channel itself has over
8000 subscribers. As with remix, an entire
demoscene-like subculture is starting to
spring up around the creation of these
videos. People vote on other's works,
comment on the pieces, and upload more and
more entries of their own, all to contribute
to the cause.


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More info?
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xplsv
blackpawn: http://blackpawn.com
ryiinn: http://pixipawn.com
kirill: http://thekirill.com
trace: http://trace.xplsv.com

nine inch nails
ghosts: http://ghosts.nin.com


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xplsv.com 2008
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