Blockparty 2009 Writeup

So. I’ve returned from Blockparty, which is a shining example of the collection of nerds, coders, musicians, artists, photographers, and hardware hackers otherwise known as a demoparty. Each year, sceners get together at the Notacon hacker convention in Cleveland, cram into a big room, and work on the productions that we eventually submit to various competitions. These include Demos (oldschool and newschool), Music (oldschool and newschool), a Wildcard competition where anything goes, and so on.

Turns out I won first place in both Music compos (Regular Music: Lorem Ipsum and Oldschool Music: Micro Media Broth), which shocked me because the competition consisted of #mod_shrine, some of the most talented trackers and demoscene musicians active today. Really fun guys to hang out with, too.

I also won the main demo competition, as the musical half of a collaboration between my group (Brainstorm) and my friends The Northern Dragons. They needed help with music for their entry at the last minute, so I wrote them a piece on site, and we took first place. Part of the prize for winning was ..the actual computer on which the demos were displayed — a $1000 gaming rig — and the Dragons insisted that I take it home! I was shocked, and utterly honored to have worked with such talented and generous guys.

Lastly, I also made music on site for a cell phone demo by my friend nrr, an unbelievable first foray into the (horrifyingly frustrating) world of MIDP Java hackery. I’m completely amazed that he was able to learn the toolkit, write effects, and put together a demo in basically under a day. This is a prime example of demo scene brilliance at work. And it got 4th place out of 9 entries, holy hell! Just insane.

In between competitions, I played an impromptu chiptune set, and you can see video of it here. You never can tell how a crowd will react to chip music, but these were straight up nerds, and were 100% rocking the hell out to Nintendo music. Even (especially) the Fat Man was jumping around, which my brain is still only beginning to process.

Anyone who’s into music, programming, or art, or wants to become involved in any of them, please join our scene full of crazy geniuses. Drop me a line and I’ll fill you in, tell you where to find stuff, and gush about Blockparty, which is, for my money, the most enjoyable demoparty in North America.

Oh yeah, also. I freaking drove both ways with NECROS AND TRIXTER. Necros tracked in my car, and Trixter coded in my car. You have no idea how close I came to swerving off the road, because it blew my mind. We had a moving demo party. NECROS WAS TRACKING. IN MY CAR. If you had told me ten years ago that this would occur, I would have laughed at you.

Onward to 2010!

Also, Turkish Rambo is out tomorrow. Check back.