8-Bit Music from Europe

Commentary

Europe in 8 Bits explores the colorful world of chipmusic. The raw aesthetics of this musical culture come from the sound of early home computers and old videogames consoles. Filmmaker Javier Polo shows how passionate musicians turn these «limited» machines into surprising musical instruments. And he and opens a new chapter in the well-known story about humans and machines.

Did you ever get to own early home computers such as the Commodore 64, Atari ST, and Amiga 1000? Did you spend your youth – and perhaps, part of your adult life – playing videogames on consoles such as the Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Entertainment System, or SEGA Master System? Were you ever fascinated by the sounds and graphics of these platforms? Whether you answered «yes» or «no» to the above questions, you have a reason to watch Europe in 8 bits.

Javier Polo's documentary tells the story of chipmusic and the chipscene, particularly within the geographical area of Europe. Chipmusic is not videogame music, as certain people mistakenly understand it. It is a kind of electronic music characteristic of early home computer and videogame consoles’ sound properties. And it is a whole musical culture connected to the demoscene, a 1980s computer culture.

Compressed Sounds from the Demoscene

Demosceners created ‘demos’ that were short audio-visual presentations on early home computers. The aims were to showcase their programming skills and extend the capacities of their platforms by manipulating their technological limitations. During the 1990s, certain demosceners and other computer music composers focussed on the musical functions of early home computers. By coding music on Trackers, which was music-making software for the original platforms as well as modern computers, composers created electronic music which was often labelled as «chiptune(s)», «tracker music», «mod music», or «8-bit music».

Towards the end of the 1990s, Zurich-based Micromusic.net, the first online chipmusic community and netlabel, was launched. In the years that followed, chipmusicians composed chiptunes and uploaded them on online communities, where others could download them for free; they released their music via diverse netlabels; the collaborated, interacted, and communicated in digital and physical places and formed a transnational social network.

More than Retromania

If you think chipmusic is all about retro-nostalgia, this documentary will prove you wrong. However, there will be times that viewers will inevitably think of the chipscene as yet another male-dominated geek collective driven by their enchantment of technology – which, on one level, can be true. The other side of the coin though presents the chipscene as a network of artists who aim at being creative in their own terms, covering diverse musical genres, from lo-fi electronica to rock music. The director Javier Polo takes the theme of passion for the machines and extrapolates it, creating an indicative introspective on the chipscene. Chipmusic practitioners underline the significance of «raw» sound for their music. They communicate how they negotiate creativity through their passion for obsolete sounds and technologies and how they appreciate the collectiveness of the chipscene – this is also proven by the fact that Europe in 8 bits was partially funded by means of crowdsourcing, which shows how supportive the chipscene can be.

Director: Javier Polo
Producers: Lina Badenes and Javier Polo
Producer Company: Turanga Films
Cinematography: Álex Asensi and Vince Merino
Editing: Yago Muñiz
Sound Design: Álex Bordanova
Postproduction: Javier Santaella
Visual Effects: Xavier Nácher
Animation: Device
Colorist: Samuel Domingo

http://www.europein8bits.com

Biography

Marilou Polymeropoulou is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. Her doctoral dissertation centres on networked creativity as seen through the lens of chipmusic culture. Follow her on LinkedIn.

Published on January 16, 2015

Last updated on April 30, 2024

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Singing in the Streets of Jakarta

Portrait

by Jeremy Wallach

Jalanan by Daniel Ziv shows the tale of Boni, Ho and Titi, three street buskers out of the Indonesian capital Jakarta. This masterfully edited portrait uses vivid storytelling methods of reality television and combines six years of footage into a compelling and beautiful tale. Resolutely unsentimental.

In Jakarta, Indonesia’s eternally traffic-choked, famously dystopic capital, there is a saying, «Ibu tiri tak sekejam ibu kota» («A stepmother is not as cruel as the capital city», literally «mother city»). Jakarta can indeed seem capricious and callous to members of Indonesia’s vast have-not majority, even those born and bred there, with its gleaming mega-malls full of merchandise no ordinary person could afford and the sprawling city’s countless other conspicuous displays of the gulf between the rich and the rest, not to mention the police-state tactics left over from the Soeharto regime that the Jakarta government still uses to terrorize the poor and defenseless.

A Society in Transition

A film by longtime Jakarta resident and Indonesian cultural observer Daniel Ziv (whose 2002 book Jakarta Inside Out is well worth a look), Jalanan is resolutely unsentimental. This docudrama about Jakarta pengamen (street buskers) is a poignant portrait of a society in transition, as a democratic Indonesia struggles to shake off the authoritarian and neocolonial legacies of its past regimes and evolve as a nation inclusive of all its citizens, no matter how humble. In 2014, there are once again hopeful signs in Indonesia, as Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s new reformer president, takes the helm, though he faces entrenched political opposition.

The Conscience of a Nation

Perhaps you need to actually spend time in Indonesia to fully understand the importance of street musicians. Although most commuters and passersby appear to ignore them, to many people they symbolize ingenuity, humor and humility in the face of misfortune, and their music represents no less than the conscience of a nation, as exemplified by the king of all street buskers, the music legend and social critic Iwan Fals, whose songs were shouted on the barricades when the Soeharto dictatorship fell amid student protests and popular uprisings (the influence of Fals is apparent in the socially-conscious compositions performed in the movie by Boni and Ho). As an anthropologist who works in Jakarta, I have seen the world of pengamen up close, a world of defiant hope amidst material deprivation and hardship, and, in my opinion, Jalanan gets it right.

Strangely Melancholy Metropolis

Dispensing with the usual dry, didactic techniques familiar to viewers of documentaries about poor people in developing countries, Jalanan opts instead for the vivid storytelling methods of reality television, customarily employed solely to portray lives of people with first-world problems. There is no voiceover narrator and almost no text. Instead, six years of footage is masterfully edited into a compelling, beautifully produced tale of Boni, Ho, and Titi, three extraordinary streetside singer-songwriters. The soundtrack, along with the film’s strangely melancholy metropolitan setting, is virtually a character in the story and includes original compositions performed by the protagonists as well as tracks by Indonesian music legend Franky Sahilatua and alternative rockers Navicula and Cozy Street Corner.

Cast

Bambang «Ho» Mulyono
Titi Juwariyah
Boni Putera

Crew

Director: Daniel Ziv
Producer: Daniel Ziv
Cinematographer: Daniel Ziv
Editor: Ernest Hariyanto
Sound Recordist: Meita Eriska
Sound Design & Mixer: Levy Santoso
Music Scorer: Dadang SH Pranoto

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