1Kb of data is not much. It is actually 1024 bytes, and if you suppose that each character is requires one byte, i've already spent 165 bytes to write this sentence. Yet some people find the 1Kb of data enough to write some cool programs!
Being a programmer myself since the GWBasic times, we also had similar competitions in my times but the sizes were different. I quickly remember the winning program in an assembly competition. It was an 82 bytes full-screen plasma effect :D
I remember a time when I was in a lab lesson at TUC, when I was told that by assembly we could change the opcode of the CPU (m8086), in such a way that the program would behave in a different (and humanly handy) way! I was amazed! By then I realized that in the right hands this could be a new way of art! There must be many sophisticated assembly-code patterns that should do quite interesting things just by using some 'witty' opcode!
When using assembly with alternating opcodetThe only standing barrier is our imagination! :-)
Greetings from Greece!