|
(german version) It's Saturday, the 26th of August, 5 am. A Bavarian starts his journey to Cologne to have a foolish good time there. His  | | The partyhall, a warm place for your satisfaction. |
destination is Evoke 2005, a demo party in the heart of the city. His goals: Finally feeling the scene again, nice talks with other crazy sceners, and watching the latest demos. For all of that I don't even worry about taking the 520 km voyage. The party had launched it's rocket the day before; but due to various other duties, I was not able to land my space mobile any earlier. Still, I hadn't missed a lot - on Friday there was just the usual opening ceremony, an Atari demoshow presented by Lotek Style and the live concert of Ultrasound (which was a highlight, according to other visitors). At midnight, the first day ended with a show of impressive demos running on gamebody-handhelds.
Accusation: commerce
A small jump in time shows that it's now 10 am. My space mobile easily found the "Vulkanhalle", the Evoke location, thanks to the perfect route planning and description on the official Evoke website. The party location, and old industrial building with a lot of revamping, looks very snazzy. At the entrance, visibly touting a good mood, sits Tobias "XXX" Heim - big boss of Haujobb and board member of Digitale Kultur e.V. It has been three years since we last met, so we had a lot of stuff to talk about. A topic that we both are concerned with again and again is the apparent commercialization of the scene. There are a few negative voices raised whenever the demoscene dips it's toes into commercial worlds. Digitale Kultur does, for example, have this problem if they show  | | Alex Scholz proudly shows a package of the first issue of his SCEEN magazine. |
demoscene productions at gamer fairs (like the Games Convention). Also, we at 4sceners.de have to live with accusations that we earn money with the creativity of other people - but 4sceners.de is a non-profit project with the goal of presenting the demoscene to a broader audience. After all, the games industry takes profit from the work of sceners - those sceners which are working for computer and videogame companies. Considering this, it's no wonder that Intel and ATI are the mainsponsors of Evoke and Intel programmer Jonathan Story held a Evoke seminar covering threading technology.A novelty in the magazine market
Another reason why I couldn't resist going to Evoke was the official launch of a new print magazine: SCEEN - magazine for digital extravaganza. It's a magazine completly in English and talks exclusively about topics which show the creative possibilities of computers. It's not only about the demoscene, but also about netlabels, machinima, and VJ-ing. There's even a DVD as additional material packed with the magazine. (PAiN issue 10/05 has a review inside!) |
