DigiVisions '91 "Showcase 22"

DIGIVISIONS was a CGi and computer graphics conference that ran from 1980 to 1993 in various locations throughout North America and Europe. DIGIVISIONS was somewhat of a closed-door conference restricted to professionals to show what they were working on and what their teams had achieved in the growing field of computer graphics

conference locations were often small venues spanning about 3-4 days of talks, showcases, and promotional videos for up and coming technology

during the Digivisios 1991 conference, near the end of the 3rd day of showcases, a small CGi development startup had slated a 50 minute time slot for something called "showcase 22" (note, it was probably not the 22nd showcase of the event)

most of what we know about showcase 22 comes from secondhand accounts of the showcase and some rumored remarks about its presence at DIGIVISIONS:

the showcase was created by a small European company called "FourTwo" (exact country unknown) who couldn't attend the conference, which was in California. The showcase consisted of a set of tapes, which was given to the organizers of DIGIVISIONS to play at the 4pm timeslot for their showcase

secondhand accounts describe a strange video being shown, with basically no information given to explain any of it. the video was broken up into sections, separated by black screens with white text, written in all capital letters and in 3 languages. The demonstrations would quickly follow each titlecard.

the demonstrations themselves were described as "weird", "avante-garde", "dated", and "creepy/unsettling.". one second hand account described it as "decades out of date". it was made particularly stranger by the fact FourTwo provided no information about what was being shown. Initially there was only a small group of 5 people or so watching the presentation - but eventually a group of about 30 people converged on the conference to see what everyone was talking about

after about 20 minutes, the organizers turned off the tape following a "particularly unsettling" demonstration being played (called "Lilico"). the showcase was subsequently cut short from there

later, the organizers and a few guests looked over the tapes and found that FourTwo actually sent in 3 tapes, meant to be played in a sequence. They later determined that the organizers accidentally played Tape 2. all together, the 3 tapes actually accounted for 90 minutes of demonstration, with the first tape only offering a surface level explanation for any of it in a sequence called "the anatomy of a world". When they tried to reach out to FourTwo for an explanation, they got no response, as the company seemed unreachable, "likely due to language barriers"

PROJECT SKYBOX is trying to hunt down this footage, as we believe some copies of the tapes are out in circulation, and we also believe a few industry professionals and digivisions staff may have digitized the footage as recently as 2008. The current status of the showcase 22 tapes are unknown. if you have any information or footage of showcase 22, please reach out to anomidae