symphony 2005 report

what about some back to the roots? that was the question on this years symphony homepage and so they turned atleast back to the location of the first symphony: a lake, surrounded by a forest, near the small town trzcianka. this place called 'bajka' isn't only a really nice place for vacation but was the perfect location for some serious boozing, lots of crazy action ('don't try this at home') and also several competitions. and this year even the weather was on our side since it was warm and sunny for the most time. our (rob and me) train trip was unspectacular, but noone could make it to the train station to pick us up. luckily also two polish sceners came with our train which helped us in the search for a taxi rank. finally we succeeded and the short taxi trip was with just 8 zloty damn cheap. after the pretty bad organizing last year and the evoke party on this very same weekend it was with only 40 visitors more like a friendly meeting than a regular party. but we weren't the only foreigners this year, also four sceners from sweden found their way to trzcianka. rawhide, artee, wix and his girlfriend. wix and artee are both organizing the birdie and the black birdie party. wix tried also to code a scroller in bbc basic on an old amstrad notepad computer nc-100 on the last partyday (update march 2006: wix wrote me that he has made now a complete demo with effects and sound in bbc basic).

in general the people were mostly outside the building, boozing and talking with eachother. on friday afternoon the first of several throwing compos began (mostly held on a sports field a few meters from the party location): keyboard throwing. on the same day there was a dvd drive throwing compo. always the same drive was used until it was completly damaged. also an old monitor was completly damaged by hammering, trampling on it and throwing it to the ground. on the evening it was after some longer delay time for my demoshow, this year a special eastern europe edition only with demos from eastern european groups. it seems that the crowd liked the most of the demos since they were dancing in front of the big screen several times. after this a c64 musicdisk was presented, followed by several movies during the night. cizar and sellen were showing their 'demo box 0.9', a unique small box (roughly the same size like a gameboy) which sole task is to show demo effects. currently without sound but it's planned to implement a sid chip. on saturday it was also part of the wild compo.

on saturday it was sunny all the day. there was a football match with about 10 sceners on the sports field while some others destroyed a second monitor. later several polish sceners were going to the lake to have some fun with high jumps in the pretty fresh water (surely not more than 18°C) and by slapping eachother with their wet pants. finally they were completly naked and two others were thrown into the water in their full clothing. expect some interesting pictures at slengpung :). on the afternoon i took part in the computer case throwing compo. on the evening i have presented the mindcandy 2 preview and the halcyon dvd. the crowd was pleased :). now it was time for some more serious compos, arranged by bloodman and silentriot (flapjack wasn't at symphony this year). the various music competions had the most entries, but there were nearly no intros (only very few c64 4k intros), no classic amiga demos and no animations. the audio equipment wasn't working that well, mostly we had no stereo sound because of problems with the mixer and/or amplifier. the best c64 demo is probably 'annihilation' by padua. in the pc compo 'isotype' by vulture design was imo the best demo even when there was a problem with the sound. the organizers terminated the demo shortly after start but it turned out to that they weren't able to play the sound in a correct way due to problems with the audio hardware (no real stereo sound). apathy released a pretty cheap looking multiplatform demo which was made in python. madwizards contributed with a pretty good pegasos demo called 'the sun in the glass garden' (hopefully i remember the title right), but the demo is unfinished and actually not available for download. the compo marathon ended with the crazy compo with the usual strange video stuff. brygada rr contributed with a lord of the rings parody called 'lord of the limbs' (english subtitles available).

the sunday ended with some more boozing and relaxing in the sun. there was no pricegiving, so check the usual sources for any results. finally on afternoon it was time to return to the train station for the trip back home. symphony 2005 was pretty different to any other party i know but for sure funny. and the location was perfect for such a small meeting.