Evoke 2006 Report (By Crest)
After a trip of 7:30 hours (shared car trip + some stations with the S-Bahn) I reached the partyplace at around 17:30. It was quite a long trip with traffic jams and heavy rain showers from time to time. At least it wasn't raining in Cologne on arrival.
The second time, the party location was the 'Vulkanhalle', and the hall fitted quite good for the expected number of visitors. After setting up my machine, everything worked well, including the Internet access.
With a delay of 10 minutes the opening ceremony with the party theme 'Train' began. It started with a short video with trains (of course heading to Evoke), railroads and train stations, and ended with a short speech. After this, it was time for my demoshow with a textmode special (mostly TMDC) and a review of the latest Assembly demos. The hall was pretty filled now and the organizers called the visitors not to waste table space. Since 23:00 we were listening to .mo and sudio with their music liveset, combined with visuals from well known demos and video stuff (actually I began to like the set :-)). The atmosphere was relaxed. At a bar you could buy food and drinks. Also demoscene.tv should now have streamed from Evoke if everything worked (and according to Scamp it did). After talking more than 2 hours with Sparcus^Nostalgia about a variety of issues (not only demoscene) it was time to have a rest.
The morning began with a fresh cup of coffee. The showers were located some hundred meters away in a fitness center. Actually there was an Intel seminar running for interested people
and we were heading for the first competition (ansi/ascii). In fact the ansi/ascii compo had a lot of entries and the overall quality was pretty high.
Wayfinder arrived but the planned Farbrausch intro had to be cancelled coz of lack of time. For 17:00 a tablekicker compo near the stage was announced. For a project called 'Evoke Express' a photographer was making photos of sceners. The photos would be used to promote the demoscene.
In the early afternoon it was time for the tiny music and a bit later for the theme remix compo. The most original remix was probably the polka version by cTrix & gaiasword :-). The 4k compo at 16:00 featured some quite good entries, for example by muhmac^neuro, Titan and TBC+Loonies, but IMO no clear winner yet.
The animation compo in the early evening was just unbelievable. the animation 'A rainy day' (7 month work!) by Deviance+Scoopex was brilliant and also JCO, again, presented a high quality release called 'Zerfall'. But the most original and funny one was probably 'Classic on the run' by Moods Plateau + Kakiarts.
Outside the hall some local kids tried skateboard tricks but also don had fun with his board. Meanwhile some unknown person made an interview with las^0ok (at least he couldn't tell me who it was). The 'gameshow' (fun compo) which had been announced for 20:15 had a bigger delay or might have been cancelled for some unknown reason. Some sceners were continuing to play at the tablekicker near the bar. The pixel compo later in the evening had several very nice entries, check them! Meanwhile Speckdrumm were making their own party in the self created 'VIP lounge'. The (short) 64k compo a few minutes after 23:00 was dominated by Kakiarts with their 'riot of flowers' and we still know that Rob is jarig.
The wildcompo (alternative platforms) featured some interesting demos especially for the Nintendo DS and a kickin' ipod nano demo by Kakiarts. Mad^bauknecht made a good 32k game for the C64. The most original demo in the (short) demo compo was surely 'Die Ewigkeit schmerzt' by neuro. It was never so interesting to read TEXT and text is pretty much the content of this demo. Be surprised when you get this Linux demo running (in the compo Ubuntu was used).
Another good entry came by Die üblichen Verdächtigen (Smash Designs) but their demo 'Butterfly effect' needed a very long loading time.
Now all compos were over and the people were enjoying the rest of the party (for example at the Speckdrumm 'VIP lounge') or just went to sleep. Before going to sleep I had a pretty long talk with puenzli^5711 about my demoshow and other things. After some hours of sleep more talk followed, this time with Ghandy about several scene issues.
Now we were heading for the prizegiving. Evoke 2006 was without doubt a really nice party with a relaxed atmosphere and some really good releases. Thanks to the organizers for their nearly perfect work. The trip back to Berlin had to be re-organized very shortly since I received a call that the car of the originally planned trip had got broken. Luckily I found another shared car trip with plenty of free space and so also Crome and his friend joined the trip.
Crest