Arte opens with a fast ride along a textured roller-coaster track, to jazz-funk. Before it ends it has shown a portrait of Albert Einstein, a gnome kneaded out of shape, a small monster girl, a fantasy skull and a flight through a kaleidoscope of 3D tunnels. Sanity, a German group, made it to welcome new members, and named it after Arte, the French-German television channel. It came third at The Party in Denmark in December 1993, ran on the Amiga’s original chipset, and was still being called “ground breaking” in Australia more than a year later.
Fast facts
- Group: Sanity, from Germany.
- Platform: Amiga, original (OCS/ECS) chipset.
- Released: at The Party, Herning, Denmark, 27 to 29 December 1993.
- Placing: third in the Amiga demo competition, with 1,592 points.
- Credits: graphics by Ra; music by Moby; code by Chaos and Mr. Pet, with McDeal.
A demo for new members
The German magazine Amiga Joker reviewed Arte in March 1994 and gave it more room than usual. Sanity, it explained, had gained new members and made a mega-demo to greet them. Demozoo records that the artist Ra and the musician Moby had joined that autumn from Dreamdealers, a French group.
The credits vary slightly between sources. The Italian Amiga Magazine credited the code to Chaos, the graphics to Ra and the music to Moby. Demozoo lists Mr. Pet as main coder, with Chaos and McDeal.
What’s on screen
Amiga Joker’s review follows the running order. After the roller coaster, the Arte logo circles a chicken while the camera zooms. A skin of text scrolls and stretches over a giant planetoid, the portrait of Albert fades in, and the viewer dives into vector tunnels. A gnome is kneaded out of shape until he finally starts up an engine, multiplies and vanishes into the depths of the monitor. A self-portrait of the artist gives way to a dot landscape with scrolling text, then a zooming sine plasma and a bouncing ball lit by a light source. The picture of the small monster girl, the magazine said, would do credit to any Surrealist. After the kaleidoscope tunnel and a fantasy skull, the demo ends quietly with vector objects, vector letters and a scrolling message carrying the credits and addresses. “Insgesamt ein klarer Fall von: wow!” the review concluded: all in all, a clear case of “wow”.
The Einstein portrait was Ra’s work; Amiga Magazine printed it in 1997 with the caption “Einstein di Ra, dal demo Arte dei Sanity”. CU Amiga’s reviewer saw the same art as a tribute to Salvador Dalí.
The reviews describe what the effects looked like, not how they were programmed, and no public source cited here explains Sanity’s code.
Third at The Party
The Party 1993, organised by The Silents, Lemon and Spaceballs, was the scene’s big meeting between Christmas and New Year. In the Amiga demo competition Complex’s Origin won with 2,340 points and Full Moon, by Virtual Dreams and Fairlight, came second with 1,860. Arte was third with 1,592, eighty points ahead of Spaceballs’ 9 Fingers.
The rest of Sanity did well that weekend too. Moby won the Amiga music competition with Elektrik Funk, Cougar of Sanity won the graphics competition and Ra came fourth.
How it was received
Arte reached British owners through public-domain libraries. In April 1994 Tony Horgan reviewed it in CU Amiga’s public-domain pages and gave it 90%. “What a feast!” he wrote. “If you’re one of those people who loves wibbly colours and trippy 3D effects, you’re going to love this one from Sanity.” He picked out a 3D tunnel “made up of real time-scaled texture maps”, the “Dali-style art” and, best of all for him, “a gorgeous blurred plasma effect that zooms and pulses in and out of the screen”. “Funky guitar licks give the soundtrack a boost,” he added. “Another essential disk for the visually-stimulated.”
It sold. The same month Amiga Format’s best-seller list from Telescan Computer Services put Arte second, behind 9 Fingers; in May, Choice Software in Sheffield had it fourth. By then many buyers had the A1200, with the new AGA chipset, and one library advertised Arte with the line “Who needs AGA with cool demos like this. A must.” Libraries were still listing it in 1995.
Its influence
When The Australian Commodore and Amiga Review covered The Party 1994, its demo column called Arte “ground breaking”. It saw Arte in the winning demo, Andromeda’s Nexus 7: “Anyone who has seen ‘Arte’ by Sanity will instantly recognise the style, but because Nexus7 is aimed at a higher base machine, the results are far more stunning.” The next month it described Ra as “the French art master behind the legendary ‘Arte’ demo”.
In 1997 Amiga Magazine listed Arte among the notable Amiga demos of 1993, alongside Kefrens’ Desert Dream and Complex’s Origin.
Sources
- The Party 1993, results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): organisers, dates and place; Amiga demo, music and graphics competitions. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1993/theparty93/results.txt
- Demozoo, production entry for Arte (web, secondary): release date, platform and credits; group entry for Sanity: Ra and Moby joining from Dreamdealers. https://demozoo.org/productions/5784/
- Amiga Joker (Germany), March 1994: “Demo-Galerie”, review of Arte.
- CU Amiga, April 1994, p. 132: public-domain reviews, Tony Horgan, Arte, 90%.
- Amiga Format issue 58, April 1994, p. 149: “Top 10 Demos”, Telescan Computer Services.
- Amiga Format issue 59, May 1994, p. 145: “Top 10 Demos”, Choice Software.
- Amiga Format issue 61, July 1994: public-domain library advertisement (“Who needs AGA with cool demos like this”).
- Amiga Format issue 68, February 1995: public-domain library advertisement (“A Superb demo for all systems”).
- The Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, volume 12 number 3, March 1995, pp. 92–93, and number 4, April 1995, p. 93: demo column on The Party 1994.
- Dream (France) issue 17, April 1995: list of French demo groups, including DreamDealers.
- Amiga Magazine (Italy) issue 94, November 1997, pp. 22–23: history of the Amiga demo scene, credits for Arte and the Einstein picture.