The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

demoscene
 /dem'oh?seen/

    [also ?demo scene?] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily in
    Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that when
    old-time warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they often added an
    advertisement in the beginning, usually containing colorful display hacks
    with greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among
    people who decided building these display hacks is more interesting than
    hacking ? or anyway safer. Around 1990 there began to be very serious
    police pressure on cracking groups, including raids with SWAT teams
    crashing into bedrooms to confiscate computers. Whether in response to this
    or for esthetic reasons, crackers of that period began to build
    self-contained display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within
    the culture such a hack is called a demo). As more of these demogroups
    emerged, they started to have compos at copying parties (see copyparty
    ), which later evolved to standalone events (see demoparty). The
    demoscene has retained some traits from the warez d00dz, including their
    style of handles and group names and some of their jargon.

    Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of smart
    tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the like. Some time
    around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a couple of years after
    that, they also started using Java.

    Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original
    platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out and
    activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While deeply
    underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the mainstream as
    accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the commercialization of
    bigger demoparties. Older demosceners frown at this, but the majority think
    it's a good direction. Many demosceners end up working in the computer game
    industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at http://www.oldskool.org
    /demos/explained/ and http://www.scene.org/.