Clone, clone, clone.
The concept of clonation and computers couple perfectly. Among computers, the concept of perfect clonation exists. It's more or less just like copying a bunch of bytes from one sector of the hard drive to another. The concept of clonation in biology, instead, is something more undefined, obscure and unexplored. It reminds us of scenarios like mass intelligence, erasure of will and individuality, unnatural order in things and exploring a territory that we feel should be reserved to gods.

The "clone" series, initially born from the collaboration of Fudge and Acme, is one of the few trilogies in demoscene, where, due to scene immaturity and rushful nature, productions seem more often tied to the inspiration of a moment. The trilogy has its lifespan beginning in the first half of 1998, where the idea of "clone meets clone" was born, then goes on in the hotness of Summer Encounter with "kill the clone", and terminates in the cold of Denmark and The Party, where it has a worthy ending with the oustanding "alien sex clone".

All of the intros have a warm acceptance in the scene, and classify at the top of the compos where they compete.

1. clone meets clone - exploring the tunnel

Placed at the beginning of a transitional period for the scene, "clone meets clone" is first of all part of a technical evolution: bidimensional effects, like blur and free directional tunnels are all bilinearly filtered; the fonts are antialiased; even the the textures on polygons are filtered.

The samples in the soundtrack are dynamically generated, with synthetizer quality. Music is low and obsessive, equalized on low frequencies.

Fudge and Acme have a story to tell, and the story may be the one of a close encounter with a different specie ("meet us"), the one of a chase in tunnels made of organic matter ("tunnels meet more tunnels") or the one of a dark lord that gives unflexible orders to an army of clones, ready to execute ("get them, clones").

Geometries, textures, decorations and 2d effects all speak of repetitivity, of perfection: the cubes multiply and get together, to create bigger ones, covered by textures made by the crossing of perpendicular lines; sequence of rectangles ornate the backgrounds; the particles populate the screen and we are ironically invited to bring order into the chaos of clonation ("connect the dots"). The music is chasing and perfect. All different kind of noises are placed beside the main harmonic line, from hisses to gurgles made of low frequencies, to electronic waterfalls of raindrops, to videogame-like pulses.

2. kill the clone - the industrial remix

Second episode, quoting Fudge themselves, is less inspired than the first and clearly recycles a lot of the effects of the first intro (the particles, radial blur, japanese-like writings, little-squares decorations). But poetic license of copying is justified, this time, by the nature of the series itself (it's clonation-themed, remember).

Atmospheres are largely similar to episode one, this time maybe more obscure.
We still continue to float in endless tunnels, where sporadically we are allowed to rotate. The rectilinear component of "clone meets clone"'s aesthetics is here abandoned towards the more rounded shapes of liquid spheres, bidimensionally deformed. Indeed, references to clonation don't lack even here, starting from the pulsing sections of a sphere that we will see for the last time just in the third episode of the series. In the mean time, we can admire the interiors of a ball made of infinite facets, or the neverending wrapping and vanishing of a metallic blob, that leaves behind itself traces of its isosurface.

For the first time in the "clone" series, a overimposed, transparent image comes on the stage.
The result is almost unperceptible at a conscious level, but it will give to the next episode that touch of dirt and anguish that will characterize it.





3. alien sex clone - the end in white

White.
The darkness of the first two episodes has an incredible ending into the third of the series, where white takes the place of black and we are catapulted in a cold and icy laboratory of experiments on alien clones.

The technical skill of the first two intros is brought in "alien sex clone" to the n-th power: the resolution is a higher (for the time) 512x384 pixels; the softsynth is perfected; duration, number and variety of the effects are at the highest levels.

The decorative squares of the former episodes are (also thanks to the higher resolution, that gives more space) mutated into symbols of an alien language, the writing of wich is cloned in sections that repeat equally onto the whole screen.

Long bilinearly filtered stripes are painted on cold and infinite architectures: planes, oniric rooms. The spheres of "kill the clone" are even more distorted, multiplied also by the effects of many positive and negative magnets, or made more spiky and cutting, even degenerating in "demoscenic" spikeballs.

The textual comments present in "clone meets clone" and "kill the clone" disappeared. The only semi-human graphic element is a fingertip of the same finger, that spots the screen during some effects. Almost every scene is aberrated by a subliminal image, lightly overimposed on the screen.

The final scene of a dissected sphere flying between two neverending planes, covered by a texture that is like the skin of an albine cloned zebra, fades with a transition effect that reminds of the beginning of "clone meets clone", and closes the circle.

Fudge exale the last breath of their demoscenic career with this intro, that is the summa of their artistic path.

[Notes on how to run the "clone" series nowadays: first, there are win32 ports of the intros, but you may encounter difficulties in running those on modern operating systems. Another option is using dosbox, and run the original dos-exe versions. For the latter one, you will need an utility that may sound familiar to the oldest ones in the scene: Scitech Display Doctor (aka Univbe).
Now you can sit back and enjoy the show.]

The "clone" intros have been rated: (yeah: three intros, three ratings. Easy, no?)

posted by friol at 8/19/2007 05:34:00 PM - under: acme, fudge, se98, tk98, tp98 - comments? here (0)

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