Evoke '99 Report

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Typed on the 24th of August 1999 in a slightly drunk state.

Unfortunately I arrived at the party place only at about 8 pm - but that didn't make any difference because, as is the case with almost every party, the opening ceremony was delayed. (Err yeah, actually there was no opening ceremony at this year's Evoke. But there will be one next year again.) At this point in time, however, only about 70/80 people were present anyway. The others came shortly after me. In total slightly less than 200 persons were present at the party in the end. And sure enough, I had to go home again together with Noize/Kolor (I live near the party place) because he had to get something for his group from the Internet. That's the disadvantage of having no i-net connection at the party place.

What I liked most about Evoke is the reasonably small size and the low amount of non-sceners. There was a latent family-feeling everywhere, which is the opposite of the atmosphere at the "big" parties. The hall was ten times better than the one of last Evoke in Aachen - but it was also ten times more expensive... That's why the entrance fee (40 DM) was higher than last year, but it was definitely not too high. There was enough place for another 100+ persons. So Evoke can still increase in size a bit.

Apart from Germans there were some Dutchmen, two (?) Austrians (hello Entropy) and a couple of well-known ansi dudes from the United States who probably wanted to pass by Evoke on their way home from Assembly.

My first reaction when I arrived with my car at the parking place in front of the building was: "What are these peasants doing here? Are they sceners I know?"...

I was relieved when it turned out that these people were "only" the local gang who probably just wanted to watch the demo scene doings... The "tekkno boys" (that's the word the housekeeper used) were standing around their peasant cars and cheerfully danced to the rhythms their car hifi set played. Well, to be fair, I have to say that they were fairly peaceful and only asked the other people for cigarettes...

The rest of the night I started in a leisurely manner. First let me tell you about the party-internal network. This year it was all okay thanks to a Dutch company which provided all the equipment (switches, hubs, cables, bla). Most of the connections were 10 mbit, but at some corners 100 mbit was available as well. After searching through the net and downloading the most interesting things, I fetched something to drink and chatted with a few people.

I was impressed by the Vacuum reserve at the party place. The guys from Vacuum had brought a large tent with them, equipped with fitted carpet, microwave and stove (if I remember correctly, there was also a fridge). They used it for some nice actions such as baking waffles... very good.

Sure enough, in this night (and also the next) I didn't find any time to sleep... even though there was a beautiful sleeping hall this time. In this way one of the greatest problems of last year's Evoke had been solved, when you always had to sleep in fear of falling downstairs or rocking your WC backwards and forwards. Well, moreover, I felt uneasy because the "local gang in front of the building" was STILL there (ehm, it was 3:30 am... What the hell were they doing outside? It was cold...) and I was concerned about my little car.

When I wanted to sleep a bit at 5:30 am, one of the organizers was missing, and I did not want to leave Kyp, who should take care of the cash-box together with the other orga, alone, either... So I helped Kyp a bit with the cash-box.

Saturday

I was looking after the cash-box together with Kyp when the Haujobb guys passed by. So we chatted a bit and I finally know what Peachy look like.

At about 6:30 am the "local gang in front of the building" was exhausted, too, and wanted to leave. There was just a little problem: Since their car hifi set had been on during the whole night, the car's battery was empty.

Therefore the tekkno boys grabbed their car, let a girl handle the wheel and pushed the car for all their worth. Hm, it did not work... Now the fools pushed the car BACKWARDS (How should that work out? Slowly go into reverse gear??) and crashed into a parked car... That was the instance when we were almost rocking our chairs backwards and forwards with laughter.

The guys now looked pretty confused... so I went out together with the Haujobbers (Kyp had to observe the cash-box meanwhile). Fortunately the other car was okay. After laughing at the fools, Hellfire and someone else pushed the car 10 metres forward with massive Demoscene Power, and it worked.

This was an impressive proof that coders are not small, thin people with pale faces, wasn't it? Personally I think it would of course have been more fun if Daniels and Hellfire had sat down on the roof of the car...

The atmosphere on Saturday was fairly relaxed at the beginning... At midday I left the party place for a while, and in the afternoon I visited the local ice paradise together with a few other dudes. But then the demo-related happenings started. Crest presented his "Best of '92 - '97" demo show - and I missed everything except the last two demos, as always. Well, shit happens.

I was looking forward to the second part of the demo show, but due to lack of time it was not possible to show the rest of the demos at this Evoke. I also missed the 4k intro "compo"... But as there was only one entry (made by Ryg and Reverend Red, see photo) this was not such a great loss.

Then the cement mixing KB/SDs performed another dance act - this is always highly appreciated. Here, I should also praise once again (*yawn*) his superb committment during the whole event, but in the meantime we're already accustomed to it. I also found his "I get the sound to run" action during the price giving ceremony on the next day especially impressive.

Next came the 64k intro compo with a smash intro by Haujobb ("pre-cloned") that was much better than the trash released at this year's Assembly. Here I have to repeat what main organizer Poti stated during the closing ceremony: Taking the party's size into account, the quality of the releases at Evoke is really high. After the ansi and music competitions (hm, maybe I confuse the order of the compos) came the wild compo, featuring a really nice animation made by Noir ("The Sphere"). Unfortunately, Plschmuschi's fun-entry ("Das Poti und 'ne Marc") ended up 1st in the end. Noir would have deserved it more (even if Sierra will beat me up when he reads this). Also nice was the entry with Flat Eric on c64.

As I later learned from Sierra (from Plschmuschi), they handed the prize money over to Noir - I really like that. Well, the poor guys from Noir had looked that unhappy...

Very nice was also the handdrawn compo... Since the "tekkno boys" had appeared again, the three terms based on which you had to draw a picture were "power plant", "cookies", and "the local gang in front of the building". Some of the entries were fantastic. The most interesting one was certainly the only entry that was handed in on a disk. "Handdrawn on a disk???" Yooo. The Americans had fetched some chalk and painted a wonderful piece of art called "kruemelmonster is ein gang-leader" on the courtyard. Then they photographed it with a digi-cam and submitted it to the compo.

There was also a raytrace compo but most of the entries were not that impressive. The pixel compo was quite okay. As usual, the audience prefered the sexiest pic (a woman licking another woman's nipples).

In the evening, I guess it was 11 pm, I showed my "traditional" (I'm running out of material) animation-fun video cassette. The opener, Winsongs '95, turned out to be overused - yeah, I noticed it -, but the rest was appreciated if I am allowed to say that in such an unmodest way. What impressed the others most was again the Pixar videos (most of all the first, LUXO JR. from '86, and the last one, GERI'S GAME from '98) but some other things got extremely good acclamations: regarding the design, the RUNNERS video, and regarding the fun aspect, for instance PINGS, featuring a couple of importunate sweet little penguin babies with which evil sharks were fed...

This year I had also brought along two serious things ("Math for Coders"). I had thought that they would not be that appreciated by the audience, but in the end I got more requests on them than on any other videos. I'll store these videos in MPEG and take them to one of the next parties.

After a long delay finally the demo compo came - however, the entries were not that cool. Well, the Haujobb intro had made a big impact on the visitors (an original statement of several party visitors: "Haujobb's 64k could have won the demo compo"). In the end Kolor's demo HERBST '77 won, featuring the usual kewl Kolor design but rather little coding... still a cool thing. This was the third time that Kolor won the demo compo at Evoke.

Some time between 3 am and 5 am a few c64 demos were shown on the big screen.

Sunday

At about 5:30 am and 7:30 am it was enough partying for me... I spent the time asleep sitting in front of my PC. The morning somehow passed without any special events - breakfast and so on -, and finally the prize giving and the closing ceremonies were ready to start. It was nice to see that due to KB's commitment it was possible to show the winning entries again with almost no problem. But some other people also made a lot of effort (Kyp fought with the compo PC, Pandur fought with mm200, Ave created the results file - and these are only the people I watched).

The results are included in this Hugi issue anyway so I don't have to type them again. As said, the smash hit was the intro by Haujobb. Also nice was Kritix' dance performance to his multichannel entry "Lebe meine Welt". I have hardly ever seen so quick legs... Well, unfortunately we faded down the song a tad too fast, otherwise we would have also experienced him singing.

Funny but a bit unsensible was the 4k intro compo winners' destroying of their prize, SuSE Linux 6.1. Everyone should know that demo parties need sponsors, whom you should not scare away. That's why Poti looked very unhappy at seeing what they did to their prize. Apart from money (a bit less than last year as the location was much more expensive), the prizes were three Erazor III cards and Relevator shutter glasses.

Finally, Poti thanked the visitors, the contributors, the sponsors, and of course also the organizers. However, as far as I recall, nobody really thanked Poti, for which I now want to make up. I'm already looking forward to next Evoke. It's a pity that I couldn't obtain a t-shit this year, but you can't get everything.

Greetings

This time my "winke, winke" especially goes to Scope, Kyp, Poti, Faxe, Crest, dv8, Avenger, Entropy, Zippy, Pandur, XXX, Malte, and Daniels (to whom I only said "bye" on leaving the party place this time).

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