tum 2006 report

the trip to tum 2006 went on without any problems. after just 5 1/2 hours i was arriving with a shared car trip in stuttgart where i took the next train to karlsruhe. after some wrong walking from the train station i finally reached the 'festhalle' in karlsruhe-durlach, for the 2nd time party location for the ultimate meeting and my first time in karlsruhe after 1999 when the town was my spot for the total eclipse of the sun :). after some longer talk with poti i was heading to a nearby supermarket to buy some stuff for the next 2 days. here i met some of the speckdrumm guys in their car from vienna and guided them to the partyplace. on the evening it was also time for the first pizza waves. at the bar you could get free coffee and tea (nearly) all the time. the opening ceremony was short but quite effective with mbb and jco as disco boys in white jacket and pants and with black sunglasses. after this several disco/dance related demos were shown (like 'just a touch of funk' or the animation 'leonardo's briefcase'). some minutes later at 23:00 it was time for the first compo, tracked music. surprisingly not very much entries. the new wii console was occupied by gaming sceners the whole evening. a bit after midnight sir garbagetruck was so free to explain us the brand new issue of the pain diskmag on the big screen (which means: get your copy!). the last compo in the night was the wild compo at 1:45, probably jco will make the race for the 1st place with his scary video 'angst'.

the second day began after some hours sleep slowly with several demos on the big screen and a fresh coffee, then three fun compos were announced: a boris valleyo conversion compo (take a boris valleyo picture and 'personalize' it), a disco-style effect compo and a 'funk me plenty' compo in which you should funk up a demo of your own choice with some 70s disco stuff. the first compos of the day (exe music, oldschool gfx) had only very few entries like all compos before, atleast the streaming music compo at 14:00 had some more entries and also the quality was quite good. between the compos the wii console is still occupied nearly all time. once again demoscene.tv is streaming live from the party. the deadline for the demo and intro compos was moved two hours, lack of entries? the 4k executable gfx compo (adopted from buenzli party) had only 6 entries but some quite good ones. it seems that the game compo is cancelled due to lack of entries, seems that the game coders are busy with wii gaming ;). at 21:00 jakob bienenhalm aka jco had its show on the main stage. beginning with fake news about a planned air tax he was singing several titles, for example 'gib mir dein regal'. on the last title he was supported by a mixed choir of real and wannabe girls (like kb ;)). after this a dj live set by ewald + bernd (aka 'der verdammte franzose' + yoda) with straight forward techno followed. before the next compos scamp 'forced' the organizers to announce breakpoint 2007, the theme in 2007 is 'demoscene through time and space'. new website is up and running.

after this it was time for the disco style effect compo. the best entries came imo from the never+muhmac, kakiarts and farbrausch. the best intros in the pretty short 4k compo came imo from mercury and limp ninja. the best intros in the combined 64k compo were 'terra incognita' by brain control and 'platinum' by farbrausch but the intro by brain control was partly slow even on the compo machine. there were also two amiga intros but the quality wasn't really high. the democompo featured ten demos for four different platforms (c64, ps2, macos x and pc windows). if you thought that hardcore is dead then you are definitly wrong. blackmaiden+5711 made a metal demo called 'neckbreak0r' for macos x and mfx made a true hardcore techno invitation demo for simulaatio 5. einklang.net made another very good techno demo called 'atomrave'. ümlaüt design made a demo called 'happens'. simple. but funny. rofl :)
the compos are (nearly) over and the party continues (with a second dj set for example). the boris valleyo compo was held shortly before the prizegiving. tum 2006 was a good and well organized party. the compos ran mostly in time and the atmosphere was relaxed. the internet connection was always working without any bigger problems. thanx to the organizers for their work, check the usual sources for results. the only real bad point was the trip back to berlin coz the driver of the shared car trip didn't showed up and i had to pay 90 euro for a train ticket instead 25 for the car trip :(