EVOKE 2007
Well, at the time of writing, it is 00:46 on the 11th of August,
and I am here with Mug UK, Earx, MSG/RG, Paranoid, Lotek Style,
Cyclone and a few others from the Atari demoscene. We are
surrounded by a large proportion of friendly PC and Amiga
sceners here, which is very cool.
The journey for me started from Cambridge, on a sunny day. Mug
UK had joined us from Warrington the night before and had stayed
the night with myself and Paula, sleeping on the sofa-bed. There
was quite a major difference to the ferry route, notably that we
were travelling via the small coastal town of Ramsgate in the
UK, on the Kent coast, to Ostende in Belgium. The drive down to
Ramsgate itself was unremarkable in itself and we got into the
port without too many worries. We were booked in for the 13.30
crossing from Ramsgate and got onto the boat in good time.
Once we were on the boat itself, we realised that there was not
much in the way of area to go to. Whilst the crossing itself was
OK, the ship was very spartan, although comfortable and clean.
The journey took a while bearing in mind there was no video wall
/ duty free shop, was unfortunately a bit boring. Not sure
whether I'd travel on that service again unless I was really
pushed, there again maybe I'm just missing the Stena HSS
Discovery, with its large walkways, facilities & everything
else. Sad to lose that fast ferry, but the cost of the oil was
causing a big headache to Stena Line, from the official line.
Now that ferry is rusting away quietly somewhere near Belfast :(
Where was I ? .... Ah yes, @ Evoke ..
On getting to Ostend, my satnav system (Tomtom) was brought out
from my rucksack and switched on and was told to take us to the
Evoke partyplace. This it did, giving us a little over 3 hours
to get there. We managed to find the partyplace after one or two
misdirections, although it was dark when we got there so that
wasn't to blame. Finally locating the parking place, we got the
car parked and walked the few hundred yards or so over to the
Evoke partyplace.
After paying for our tickets (and getting 10 euros back for
having registered as a long-distance traveller) we came into the
party proper and almost immediately met up with Paranoid, Earx
and MSG. Cyclone appeared a little after we arrived, bought his
ticket and got his wristband. We had some difficulties at first
in getting any places together, but some extra tables have now
been brought in. I managed to get set up next to Earx and MSG
who have their Falcons here. Earx is busy coding. MSG is in
wormbag mode at the time of writing this, though he has been
busy writing what looks like music on his Falcon. I can't wait
to hear if he has a new composition to be released here @ Evoke,
we will wait and see what happens.
Cyclone is currently typing some stuff in German into MS Word,
it looks like the new version so maybe he also downloaded the
torrent ? I'll let you work that one out :)
We have a wired net connection here and also a wireless one,
though I remembered to bring my network lead and am connected
via the router plugged in near Earx and MSG's location. It's a
heavy duty industrial router - think it might be a Cisco router
- but it's doing a great job so far.
@ 3am on Sat morning the music is pumping, not too loud though
despite one or two spikes. People are chatting, coding and just
generally catching up. It turns out that the very laptop I'm
sitting next to at the moment belongs to none other than Gina,
who I remembered from last year's Outline party - she was the
lady who was writing a thesis on the demoscene. I'll be catching
up with her at some point soon when she returns. It's getting
quite late but I don't feel that tired just yet, however, will
try and get some sleep a bit later on if possible. The only
quiet option seems to be to sleep in the car, With Mug's loud
snoring (yes, he's louder than CiH) and the fact that even my
Astra is a bit of a squeeze for 2 may rule that option out for
now, at least.
Mug UK reappeared a short time ago, he says he plans to sleep in
the hall close to his & the Belgian's laptops - although I doubt
anyone here is in the mood for thieving to be honest. Quite a
lot of laptops are left unattended at the moment so it's not a
major concern.
@ 10.14am on the Saturday morning and I am back at these keys. I
didn't get an awful lot of sleep last night as it was quite
noisy; managed to get some nuzzle-time in for a short while but
there was quite a lot of background noise going on and no real
sleeping area where the noise could be escaped from. Still, in
spite of this, I don't feel too bad at the moment, though it
remains to be seen how I'll do about sleeping at some point
tonight as I'm the one who'll be driving tomorrow afternoon on
the way back to Ostende and the ferry back to the UK.
Most people are now up and about and Heinz has just walked in,
he looks fairly fresh ... he's been awake for about an hour but
is still nuzzling a bit. We'll let him get himself sorted out :)
I've been able to see a preview overnight of the forthcoming
intro from Earx / Lineout. Although release is still in the near
future (maybe at the next Outline, but unsure on actual timings)
the effects do look rather good even at this early stage. MSG
has been helping out with the music too, so it'll be something
to look forward to in due course.
There's been a fair bit of interest in my Falcon here, notably
as I have the Mega ST keyboard attached to it. People outside of
the Atari scene were obviously not familiar with the Mega ST &
STe machines that were released late on in the ST's life which
is understandable, but there's been a lot of cool support in
relation to how it is wired in. I also got talking to Gina, who
had previously met with us at Outline '06. She's still ploughing
on with her thesis on the demoscene and still looks as good and
is as pleasant as ever.
Around 12.30pm or so, an impromptu demo show was held here,
showing off some classic Falcon demos like Underscore, Lost
Blubb, Cycedelic Knockout and Obnoxious. A showing of the H Demo
IV was also put on, strangely enough it didn't attract the
crowds too much ...
... but the rest of the show did, with a fair crowd gathering to
watch the rest of the demos shown at the time. Underscore got
quite a lot of PC demoscene people watching as most Atari demos,
and particularly Falcon demos, are new to them. One scener in
particular, Sir Garbagetruck (American-born but now living in
Finland) was intrigued by the demos and we spent a fair bit of
time talking about the Atari scene in general. He stressed that
he was trying to get hold of some Atari kit so they could show
some demos at the Scenebooth next year. We'll have to talk to
Mark Branson @ Cheshunt Computer Club about that as he's the
club's self-titled 'Junk Collector / Secretary' (!). Sir
Garbagetruck did say something about visiting the Sundown party
in the UK during September, hopefully something can be sorted to
get him over the difficulty.
It is now around 20.25 in the evening, we are going through the
compo releases. We've had the music compos already and the
'Wild: Animation' compos, these were OK although there has been
a bit of controversy about the pre-selection that went on with
the OGG music compo. While it was unfeasible to show all entire
40 entries, these were whittled down to 14 but all of those that
were shown tended to be very much of the drum&bass variety; not
being a fan of that genre personally doesn't help, but one
particular contributor who'd written a tune was a tad cheesed
off that his entry had not been played as part of the
competition.
We're waiting for the pixel compo at the time of finishing this
article and along with the PC demo compo is the second Wild
compo that features the alternative platforms. I wonder if any
of the entries will beat the excellent crop that turned up from
last weekend's oldskool compo at Assembly ? We'll have to wait
and see.
Aside from the general confusion when we first got here and the
slight annoyance we felt about not having computer places at
first, I've personally enjoyed Evoke no 10 and would not say no
to visiting future Evoke parties for as long as they are held.
The only other issue is to do with the party itself being rather
noisy at night, with thumping bassy dance music being played
rather a lot.
The pixel graphics are rather good, one or two good pics on the
old faithful Vic 20. Viznut will be pleased to hear about those,
no doubt :) I hope he's watching the stream that demoscene.tv
are providing. Now the raytraced graphics have also been shown.
Well, Cyclone is now calling for this article to be completed so
he gets his wish ... he's been remarkably patient, despite the
loud noise here.
Signing off...
Felice for Alive, 2007-08-12
|
