marast 2005 report

the trip to my first party this year was pretty comfortable and in the train to prague i was listening continously to scene music from my mp3 player. the sucking part was the needed bus to reach the party location in the small town cerveny ujezd. the bus was only driving every hour and so i had to wait very long. after nearly 60 minutes it was so crowded at the bus stop that i couldn't enter the bus. finally after 30 more minutes of waiting i succeeded and reached the location, the backside of a government building. the location was perfectly dark and the big screen had a really good quality for such a small party. also the sound system was ok. several demos were already running and this continued throughout the day. pretty fast i met the guys from peon and i had especially with flash a long talk. sometimes he was also translating czech announcements for me :). unluckily they have nothing ready for marast so that we can actually just hope for some surprises in the compos. on the later afternoon a demomusic quiz was held in which i have participated (together with flash and two other guys). i had obviously a good day since i was the fastest person in 19 out of 40 played tracks. at 20:15 it was time for my dos and amiga demoshow. just right in time about 20 polish sceners (brygada rr, azzaro/mawi and plastic.pl) + dipswitch (actually living in poland) were arriving at the partyplace. brygada rr, the group which is known for their pretty strange wild videos, made a funny invitation video for marast. after my demoshow bomber made a demo quiz, using a special cd by pixtur with several prepared pc and amiga demo clips. it seems that the people had fun with this quiz. this time flash won. after the quiz nula showed several animations, followed by some czech amateur video. in this time flash was watching more classic dos demos/intros on my machine.

the morning of the second day began the traditional czech way: waking the sleeping people with the demo 'xaos' by mist, followed by a fresh mix of classic and newer demos. the planned football matches outside are cancelled because the rainy weather. at 10:00 nula/marshals and redox/movsd were presenting a movsd demo special. the graphics and music compos were not shown on the big screen. instead the organizers prepared three computers on which the visitors could check the entries for themselves. you can like it or not, i prefer to see the stuff on the big screen and according to dipswitch also the most visitors like to see the compos the usual way. last but not least this has also something to do with respect for the artists work. the voting is done with traditional papersheet since there is no real network existing (not much more computers here than at symphony party). finally zden/satori arrived at the partyplace, he will make a live performance on the late evening. besides the peon guys another scener which i never met before, so this alone was worth the trip. after eating some pizza and voting for music + gfx we are now waiting for the next scene quiz and the demo/intro compos. the last scene quiz was held in the style of 'who wants to be a millionaire'. after drinking a beer in the brygada rr bus it was finally time for the compos. 11 entries in all categories (4k, 64k, demo) isn't really much but the quality was ok for a small party with 70-80 visitors. the 4k intro 'hedron' by hardread is quite good. the same with the 64k intros 'android' by fresh! mindworkz and 'we cook people' by tb2. the marshals demo 'ambivalence' will probably win the compo. it's beginning with a nature scenery but the second part is completly different and doesn't really fit in my opinion. movsd contributed with 'realtime prague' in which they are showing several well known buildings of the czech capital. looks nice, but as a demo it doesn't really work. shortly after the compo zden/satori began with his vj live performance. it was really interesting to watch him working with the equipment and he was not to busy to talk with interested people while he was working. from time to time he mixed also demos or demo effects into the videos. dipswitch tried to win him for a possible netlabel night at this years evoke.

shortly after midnight it was already time for the pricegiving (voting deadline was two hours earlier). hardread won the 4k compo. fresh! mindworkz won the 64k compo, followed by tb2 and racers. the demo compo was won by marshals, followed by lowfuel and movsd. after the pricegiving the organizers were showing / playing the entries from the graphics and music compos on the big screen. even when the party isn't completly over yet i can already say that it was a good choice to visit marast. the organizing was good, all the compos starting in time and i have never seen so much demos on the big screen at any other party. only the way how the graphics and music compos were arranged is questionable. so all in all thanks to marshals for their good work.