cafe photo album
#2003
01 июня 2003 |
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CAFe' 2002 Party Report
(c) 2003 Paracels of Placebo (c) 2003 Euro Chart 46 by IRIS CAFe' 2002 Party Report Written by Paracels of Placebo The russian scene.. For real or just a blurry hoax? Huh, that is a smart question really. Being a Russian guy, I'd say we have something meant to be a part of the Amiga scene, but alas, it is too dim and overestimated by the great many of Russian amigans. Nay, I'm not saying I am the only one so god damn smart in here, this isn't so, unfortunately. But I hope I have a right to write about things I'm concerned about. Well, anyway, I'm not going to flame about it now. Let us better be starting our trip to the Russian suburbs, where the very best of ex-Soviet scene forces fight their ultimate combat for the right to be called the overall scene number one. Russian demoparties. 'What? What did you just say? - some European sceners might say in surprise. - Is there really something like Mekka Symposium or Assembly? In the land where wild bears wander along the streets talking to the passers by and drinking vodka with every human being able to move in that dreadful frost???!!!' He-he, yep, we do have demoparties held each year and even twice a year. No bears, no killing frost, just some friendly sceners... and of course, vodka. Not for each and everyone though, but for those who love it (there is a number of such people, but their quantity is much less than of those respecting beer ;). Chaos Constructions held in Saint Petersburg, the most scenish Russian city ever, has faded away in darkness and uncertainty. Pity, but there is nothing we can do about it. This year all the inspired demosceners were invited to the capital of the Tatarstan republic, the federal unit of Russia. Kazan is the name of the city where hundreds of coders, graphicians and musicians were to measure their skills not only in code, graphics and music, but in talking, drinking and having fun. CAFe'2002, i.e. Computer Art Festival - this is how the greatest Russian scene event was called this year. About 200-250 people from quite a number of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian cities visited CAFe this year. There were even two guys from Helsinki, Finland, Thomas and Kris, who became real friends for all Russian sceners in one single moment. Dunno whether this was all about our mental similarity or something else, but everybody considered them to be the very great guys speaking all the possible languages, except Russian. :8) By the way, Kris is an organizer of Alternative Party, which is held in Helsinki. Why, it seems I've run too far already. Let's make one step backwards to know how our fabulous trip to Kazan began. It all started about one month before the party, which was to be held on August 24-25. We finally decided to make a demo for the ZX-Spectrum demo compo. Unfortunately our Amiga coder Senat thinks that he is not yet skilled enough to make something worthy. I doubt that, but he always says that in his humble way. So we decided to take part in ZX-Spectrum demo and graphics, Amiga/PC graphics, 64k web page and Wild compos. Placebo is known in Russia mostly as a Speccy demogroup and our Amiga activities are just about to grow into something serious. At least, we hope so. However, we just couldn't miss the biggest scene event of the year 2002, neither could we visit the party with no demo made. So then the idea to create the demo called 'Inbetween' was born. In about one month we finally succeeded as the demo was finished. Luckily for us we did it in a couple of days before our trip, so I could spend some time finishing my Amiga picture. At last the day has come. At about 10 a.m. we were to meet at the train station and so we did. Besides Placebo members, which were Dman, Paracels, Sairoos, Spy & Crazy, there were 5 more guys: Demiurge Ash, Pyrodex & Kooll of Jeez and Neo & Flabber of Virtual Masters. So our delegation consisted of all in all 10 people. Our way was first to go to Nizhni Novgorod. This is the Зrd biggest city in Russia after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Then we would have almost a whole day for wandering and seeing sights. So, we reached Nizhni Novgorod at about 2 p.m. I must say that this was a pretty nice city, the views were as spectacular as I expected, the Volga river was just fantastic. Our excursion was mostly done in Kremlin and its surroundings. Yes, here in Russia, we have more than one Kremlin in Moscow. Having walked much, we decided to find some cozy place and found one right near the Kremlin's wall. A bench we had occupied was rather worn and dirty, but sitting there and having an open-air dinner as well as drinking beer and such made us all feel tremendously good. Afterwards we spent our time just walking and talking. It was funny, but stupid really, as we just didn't know what else to do. :) At last the time has come for us to continue our trip to Kazan. We rushed to the train station and happily got onto the train in time. We were all oh so tired, that right after we had left Nizhni Novgorod, everybody fell asleep at once. From about 9 o'clock in the evening till 6 o'clock in the next morning we were to spend inside the hurrying train. Damn! The night was rather cold and we were stupid enough economizing our money on the bed-clothes. However, we reached Kazan successfully. But, alas, the weather was frustrating. An ugly tiny rain has shitted up our glamour mood completely, so we stepped out of the train with the sad grimaces bumped upon our grim faces. The party-place was about 15 minutes of walk from the train-station, so we decided to reach it by foot in order to get warm and to have our first and consequently the most vivid impression of Kazan. What can I say, the impression was rather faded and gloomy. We all expected too see a huge and prosperous city with thousands of cars and people rushing here and there, fascinating signs of architecture, modern and well designed super-markets and stores. Blah, we saw none of these. Just some empty streets and rare bunches of people selling something right upon the tramway road was all we saw that morning in Kazan. However it didn't stop us from going to the party-place and in about 20 minutes we reached it at last. The party took place on the 1st floor of the Kazan Actor's House. There was a suitable hall with lots of removable chairs and a respectfully looking projector. The screen was a bit too worn though and even cut in some particular places, but that was 'Ok'. Quite a number of people were already hanging over the place. Some of them had even come here the day before the party. We walked through the main entrance, got up onto the 1st floor and, to our endless pleasure, met a lot of our old good friends at once. Still we were not at the party place exactly, but in the so called chill-out, the place where everyone could take some rest. Before entering the final door we took off our skirts and sweaters (it was rather cold, remember?), so our firm green t-shirts could be seen. There were the label of our group and Placebo logo on the front side of the t-shirt, and again the big Placebo logo on the back. (Watch the EC gallery to see it yourself!) So, having finished our last preparations we stepped over the last barrier, dividing us from the glorious demoscene spirit flowing everywhere at CAFe'2002. I must mention here, that the entrance to the party was in no way free of charge. You may laugh, but I'll tell you how much did it cost. 100 roubles for one person's two-days-party-shaking. This is only a bit more than $3! 3 god damned American bucks!!! Can you imagine that? Nah, this is not a bloody exception of the year, not at all. Frankly speaking, such a fee is quite usual at almost all Russian demoparties. There are even ones with no entrance fee at all. So, every person, intending to enter the party-hall and to vote for the compo works were given a special '1st day' vote-sheet and a pen with CAFe'2002 logotype. There were no tickets or such. Everyone has just got a blue print upon his or her hand, which meant that you were free to enter or leave the party-hall all day long. The first day was given primarily to ZX-Spectrum, though some Amiga/PC compos were also represented, basically the music ones. The most interesting works were shown in, of course, ZX-Spectrum demo compo, where our demo called 'Inbetween' has managed to get the 1st place. The 2nd place winner, a demo by Skrju called 'Summermilk' was something really stylish, though there were absolutely no breathtaking effects or full-screen pictures, but this work has earned its place fairly enough. Despite the awaited UNREAL quantity of visitors their number was rather overestimated, as there were only about 200 people in the party-hall. However, everybody seemed to be quite pleased with that. In between the copmos organizers were showing an audience the most outstanding works of the worldwide demoscene. This time Amiga was represented by the smashing Maturefurk's demo 'Lapsuus' and, of course, by TBL's marvelous 'Little Nell'. The classics were not forgotten either. It seems, that 'Relic' by Nerve Axis has already become a standalone example of overall high-quality demomaking. As a compo machine organizers used an Amiga 1200, equipped with Blizzard 060/5OMHz turboboard. It was simultaneously connected to a projector and a usual TV-Set. I'd like to mention all who deals with beloved the Amiga and have visited CAFe'2002 this year. So, it was team Power Amiga, KANO & BOS of famous Russian crack-group RAMPAGE, MAYhEM and others, whom I unfortunately do not remember. All in all there were alot of amigans at the party. The day was slowly coming to its end. Everybody was already a bit tired of all those infinite talks, screen flashes and chaotic sounds, breaking through the huge stereos, placed upon the scene corners. Even the great amount of (by the way !!!prohibited!!! ;)) beer didn't help lots of sceners to stay tuned and fresh all the time. It was clear, that the 1st day of CAFe'2002 was almost over. Organizers told everyone that if there was somebody wishing to go to the cheap hostel to spend the night there, him (or she) must follow the specially prepared man. His name was called then and, forming the small streams, some of the party visitors began to trickle to that so-called guide. By that time all the '1st day' vote-sheets had been filled at last and then given to the organizers. Dunno why exactly we decided to stay at the party-hall. Thank God, it was allowed to sleep right inside. Well, either we have already got used to it, or we are just a bunch of lousy skinflints, saving our money in all possible ways. However, we haven't regretted that step! The night was full of all the possible entertainments one has ever dreamt about. There were all kinds of food and drinks bought by lots of people and gathered on one huge table with a number of sceners sitting around it and chatting as friendly as only they could. The Finnish guys were also there. Those of us capable of speaking English (and even the ones who weren't! :) talked to them almost all night, asking all sorts of questions, plenty of which were sometimes stupid and sometimes pretty funny, like the answers were. Here I must admit that Kris and Thomas were polite and very communicative guys. Each of us have appreciated that very much. The free Internet access was also at everyone's disposal, though to get through the chat-freaks, who had occupied the machines like mad dogs, was rather a hard task to do. However, the compo machines were free from time to time, so anyone could come and watch some demos. Most amigans were using the chance and thus watching Lapsuus, Little Nell, Rain and others running on 060 with great pleasure, as well as some nice slideshows by Lazur and Fame. But, of course, the main process, which kept flowing and flowing all night long was that marvelous party-jagging-talking-having-fun one. And yet, at about 3 or 4 a.m. everyone felt sleepy and started the quest for the suitable place to lie down and began watching sweet & lovely on-scene dreams. Nonetheless there were some wackos, who hadn't slept for a whole night, while all the others were sleeping everywhere around. Those, who slept right on the scene, have later on been called true SCENERS. Huh, so that is how to become a real scener! At about 9 a.m. we were awaked by the arriving organizers, who looked well-rested and quite happy with how the party was going. Blaming the whole world, we stood up and went for a morning walk in order to buy some food. We also had a few hours before the second day of the party began. Forming a pretty numerous band, which consisted of Placebo, CyberPunks Unity, Constellation I.A., Eey-Q, Virtual Masters members and others, we parted the party place and went towards the Kazan Kremlin, which was seen far away from the place where we had been. We reached it in about 40 minutes. Heh, it was a tremendously difficult road, as the weather was rainy with no sun shining from the gloomy sky. However, we felt much better when we saw Volga, the greatest Russian river, flowing like a giant stream of dark water and showing us its gentle power. The sightseeing was finally finished. We've visited Kremlin, made a lot of photos there, had a really great time. And then the time to go back had come. It was already about 11 a.m. when we again saw the building of the Kazan Actor's House. A small group of people were crowding near the entrance. We hailed them and entered the warm and cozy house, which held true scene spirit for each of us. The 2nd day was meant to be an Amiga/PC dedicated one. Well, so it was. Skipping all those music competitions, I'll better have a more precise look on the Amiga/PC graphics compo. This year we had 8 images competing in this nomination. The winning image 'Cyborg in Love' by Demiurge Ash was a very nice image, featuring a man's face in the center of the screen (he seemed to look like a real astronaut, naturally) and a woman's face in the upper right corner with a smoothed background, spread all over the picture. All in all, this was quite good looking photoshop work, a bit too dim maybe, but yet worth seeing. The 2nd place was given to an Amiga graphician; L-Graph of team Power Amiga and this is a very pleasant attitude. His image called 'For the Homeland!' had something similar to Neurodruid's 'Blood' and was perfectly pixeled. While it was shown during the compo, somebody in the party-hall shouted: 'Lazur rules!'. Indeed, L-Graph's image looked so good, that it was easy to consider it to be drawn by Lazur. Both pictures were made in high resolutions. The next compo I remember quite vividly was really Wild. ;) Gosh, we had a lot of laughing then. There were only 2 (of all in all 6) impressive works at the compo. One of them was made by the Чth Dimension group (by its one member, naturally, named G.D.) during the night before the 2nd day of the party, and the other one was made by us, Placebo. The wild by 4D, called 'Tanechka', was a pure flash-based hand-drawn animation. To make it all clear, here in Russia we have a so-called pop-star Tatyana Bulanova. She is a rather average singer, but it usually doesn't matter for such 'stars' whether they do really have a voice or not. So she thinks she is just great, while all her songs are complete shit (for the common comprehension, so to say, for despite the real state of things there are a lot of Tanya's fans somewhere out there). Next up, and the most interesting part was, of course, Amiga/PC democompo. Yes, it was a joint compo, but considering that there were only 5 demos for both PC and Amiga, I think such a step by the organizers' shouldn't be treated too critically. After all, we've got what we wanted. The Amiga demo 'Propaganda' by team Power Amiga had won the compo without any difficulties, though the PC demo 'WireWorld' by Critical Mass was quite impressive whatsoever. Unfortunately (or maybe luckily?) all other demos seemed not to be of any interest for me that time, thus I can't tell you a word about them now. As far as I remember, the Amiga/PC democompo was the last compo of the 2nd day. After it has been finished, organizers asked everyone to fill the votesheets completely and some moments later gathered them in order to count the votes before 8 p.m. So they succeeded and did that even earlier. However we had got quite an amount of spare time before the moment the winners were announced. It was a sad period of time, naturally, as we already knew that soon we would be rushing along the dark Kazan streets to the city train-station, no matter what the results would tell us. And so, alas, it was. Despite that we'd got a bloody hell of prize places, the mood was all the same far from being good, none of us felt happy. Yes, it was a pleasure to realize that 'Inbetween' DID win the ZX-Spectrum demo compo, as well as our 'Lenin 2003' wild compo entry, but still, leaving Kazan was something screwing into the utmost deep of our souls and hearts. Gosh, we (at least I for sure!) felt that not the first time at all, but yet every time it wasn't easier to bear it again and again. Having gotten our prizes and having made our last photos, we went off running towards the train-station. Elph of Cyber Punks Unity decided to accompany us for a while and simultaneously take some interviews for the new issue of the fabulous 'Adventurer' (one of the most popular Russian disk magazines for Speccy). It was dark and wet on the streets as we went through Kazan, talking and discussing the latest events. It was a pity to leave our friends, party-place and the holy spirit of Scene behind our backs, but we had to, otherwise we could stay in Kazan forever. :))) (Nay! Not because we've fallen in love with that city, 'cause, frankly, we haven't, but merely because we might have missed our train :)) Luckily we reached the train-station in time, bought ourselves some food, beer, Coca-Cola and almost immediately got into the train, which drove off after around 10 minutes after our arrival. We were going back to Nizhni Novgorod. During our comeback we were sleeping as if we were dead. It seemed for us that the night was too short. However, we came to Nizhni again. We wanted to wander along its streets one more time, but our train to Kovrov was leaving after around 10 minutes or so, thus we only had time to buy the tickets, drinks and rush through the underground passages to the train, which, passing nearly 4.5 hours, has finally brought us home... Our trip to Kazan was over at last.
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