What is "nullarbor"

Nullarbor (sometimes spelt Nullabor) can refer to:

Places:

• Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia
• Nullarbor, South Australia, a locality
• The area between Norseman, Western Australia and Ceduna, South Australia
• All the land between Perth, Western Australia and Adelaide, South Australia

It can also refer to:

• Nullarbor Nymph, an Australian hoax
• Nullarbor (demo party), or the Nullarbor Digital Content Competition, based in Perth, Western Australia

The Nullarbor demo party is a combined game development and demoscene event in Australia. The event takes place at the beginning of every year in Perth, Western Australia. It was named Nullarbor in reference to Perth's physical isolation from the rest of the Australia. Like other similar demo parties worldwide, it provides a platform for game developers and graphic artists to showcase their skills.

The event is supported by Edith Cowan University, the Western Australian government, Perth ACM SIGGRAPH, Perth IGDA, and many game developers (e.g. : Microsoft and Interzone Games), and is managed by Adrian Boeing and Martin Masek. The party is also supported internationally by demo scene groups from Europe and the USA.

Nullarbor differs from many other demoparties: it does not try to keep the demoscene underground, instead it tries to promote democulture to a wider audience. Nullarbor targets academia, government and industry to promote game development and democulture in order to legitimize the scene. As a result, some of the demo entries diverge from the standard demoscene expectations, for example "Landscape Visualization", which placed 2nd in the demo competition, which were poorley received by the European demoscene which still retains a hacker culture.

Nullarbor is sometimes also referred to as "notrees", which is a play on the name 'Nullarbor'. In 2007, the event was retitled to "Interzone nullarbor 2007", or iz null in a shortened form.