Function 2007 party report

Written by Ziona

The Function party is the currently biggest Hungarian demoscene party... And in 2007 it was a really great experience!

Back in time I never wrote party reports, max. short situation reports, because my opinion was that everyone has different experiences, perhaps the others aren't interested in my point of view, but there is basically a shared segment, if you come not for the companionship only. Anyway it is rather a subjective pronouncement about my experiences, maybe not fully unbiased and not surely like a classic party-report - where I wasn't there may be skipped, but I try to give an overall description.

I looked forward to it because of several reasons. At first, as the last party (the SceneCon) had been at the start of summer. It was lasting for one day, but nevertheless it was impressive - it was a great success and the organisation was extraordinarily accurate. Of course a one-day-party has a different feeling, but the truth is that nowadays less people arrive at Friday, the bigger part of the crowd comes at Saturday afternoon. Irrespectively of it, I vote for the two-days version.

I prepared for the event intently before this weekend, the nights passed near my computer, because I knew - after 5 years I would have to release again. From Thursday to Friday my sleep-time wasn't more than 3 hours, but I really didn't care about that.

So, at Friday evening, I left my workplace, rushed home and it became obvious that the music would be finished at the party. Inno arrived between 8 and 9 o'clock in the evening, with a heavy-laden car - with his desktop-PC, compact mixer and the beloved AKG earphones, which became beloved for me too after the making of mastering work. After preparing our stuff along several hours, we started the travel, I don't know exactly when, but that was already late at night and the journey took longer than a hour, because we circumvented twice the byways back and forth, which was a long torture, somehow we had been corrected, but I truly don't remember how we arrived.

That might have been at 1 o'clock after midnight. I found hovering people and a lot of old friend there, Kelsey at the infodesk, lots were sauntering through the court-hall-comporoom triumvirate, the ones who wanted to meet each other or who weren't near the computer. We put down our stuff, moved to a desktop and would have started the fevered working, if we hadn't been distracted by some of the human factors all the time :) We couldn't stand not talking a bit: when I decided to leave the room, for walking to the court, at the half way, I always met someone, more accurately that happened in every 10 meters, and then of course, we had to chat about common or not common, but interesting themes, and what's the news with other ones, because we only meet each other in-real-life just once half a year (or once a year).

In the room, there were two dominant audio sources: one from an Amiga, running demos that everybody could hear, because that came from the most effective brought sound system :) This music incredibly matched my taste, so its volume didn't matter for me. Until this, those, who came from curiosity or began discovering the demoscene, could watch the continuous demo-show, mainly collected from great classic demos until depletion, but at least until dawning, as I saw.

Kelsey, Gargaj (the main organizers), Zoom, Vincenzo, Tindome, shr, Alvaro, Jimmi, SDr, Sampi and many others were already there - at the court, a good atmosphered companionship had evolved, ADT of Absolute was the first, who clobbered himself, so needed strong support (did you know that he made the logo of the index.hu, without any fonts?). The prime of the Amiga scene was roughly there, as I saw, however, the C64 scene was unfortunately represented by a smaller part at this time, but for example (without mentioning the full list) Clarence, Oswald, Soci and Jailbird were there. Leon, Cargo and Poison couldn't come, there were lots of weddings organized for this weekend, I wouldn't make a decision in such a situation certainly :) Not to forget the little bit loud foreigners (without the full mentioning again), as the presenter of Fix.tv, Zsombor would

say! Ok, to tell the truth, not all of the foreigners were so loud, this concerned mainly the Polish pals, but it was glad to see them :) The Madwizards stood outside and they spectacularly felt good, but there were Dutch, Italians, Spanish, Austrians, visitors from Switzerland and Serbia too, furthermore, Reptile had just come home from England this year and was so enthusiastic, that he went home for several hours to make a release and revive the Power Rangers. ;)

Still being outside, Xenophobe decided to show his gastronomical experiences, so he cooked paprika potatoes for the community in an "industrial amount". Unfortunately we missed this, I wasn't exceptionally hungry, I just walked around the place to discover a silent place for mastering. If Xeno cooks as well as he makes music, there is no problem. The fact that this year, the making of 'paprikáskrumpli' wasn't our task isn't irrelevant, so thank you, Xeno!

I started to detect a silent place again, but in the meantime I had been told that our Italian graphician girl, Delilah, who feels herself a half Hungarian in her heart, was here somewhere. "But where is she?" I looked around in the room, and was surprised... really a familiar face and hair. For more than 3 years we had been chatting through the net, but this was the first time to see her in real life. I went there and greeted her with ovation, and she said, that my face was so familiar, except for my hair, compared to the picture that she had seen years ago. When I say, that she is very friendly, I don't say much. She started to tell stories about her journey until arriving here, then mentioned several other themes, from the everyday life, over the grapchic, to the creativity. In the first few minutes I had to listen strongly, because she speaks English very glibly and has themes in every minutes :) Through the lack of practise, maybe I can get along in reading text and understand the speech, but I have to practise, giving courtly answers to it in real time. So, we talked about one hour, she continuously, I difficultly was speaking English and forgot, that I felt embarrassing through this, because there would be a lot of things to say, although I can't make words from all of my thoughts. While you can't express yourself with the constraint of expression - that's hardcore. She eased me from time to time, that it doesn't matter, everything is understandable and her English speech ability comes from the everyday usage of it. I tried to believe her.

It was 4 o'clock at night, and I really should make the music finished, because the deadline would come at 12 o'clock. Inno was making his demo on his PC with Addict, what - not to make anybody confused - became a demo only because the music was mp3, otherwise it would have been a 64k (then the competition would have already contained at least two 64k). I made a move to a random direction to look around, what kind

of places could be found there where the noise was lower. During this, I met SDr and saw the solution, advising a little, silent smoking room at the floor, which was almost empty of people, with the sleeping room on the other end of it. Near the closed door we couldn't guess if someone was there. Let's take our stuff inside - my Macbook, Apple keyb, mouse, headphones and let the work begin. Sadly, my brought Genius phones were a barrow of cr*p, and it was like the music would come from the deep of the barrow bubbling under the cr*p, in other words the middle and high tones weren't existing. That wasn't reasonable, in addition I usually hate mastering through headphones, moreover, I avoid it if I can. As Inno finished working, I ponced his AKG. That's it, I know, what is the next investment, it was really worthy to work with it. SDr, Vincenzo, Sampi and Inno had joined periodically. Sometimes a few persons looked inside this little working place, but not in a considerable frequency. Although Jimmi made a durable impression, when at dawning, he targeted the sleeping room, watched inside the smoking room and established that someone was being awake there yet, thinking that stupid obsessed people were there, what didn't matter him in getting into bed. After all this, at 9 o'clock morning he checked back with his just waking-up-Chinese-looking eyes, while wagging his head deploring - seeing the same environment as several hours before, with the unforgettable look - "Dude, she's diseased!"

Vincenzo had also joined for a while, announced that he just bargained a vocoder and was very happy with it. He analyzed what to correct concerning to the music in his opinion, and that was really helpful, as I planned that also, but the confirmation was useful - if he didn't say, I couldn't be sure to make it. SDr gave notes too, Sampi was in a similar situation like me - he wanted to finish his music and discovered that this is a perfect place for doing this, then came to associate in it with a notebook. We arranged that he insisted on Reason, because his opinion was that the music notes run simply horizontally, but I'm a tracker-maniac, and I always see the timeline vertically, because I have been using tracker since my teenage hood. We explained to each other our opinion about each other's entry and that part was instructive, thanks a lot.

I think it couldn't be 9 o'clock yet, when the compo room and its surrounding had been rocked at full sound volume, like some hard(terror)core-like noise-mass, which, as it emerged, was the Simuulaatio 2007 invite from Mfx, and the funniest thing was that Gargaj reached his goal with it - a six-day old corpse would wake up from it. I stood hard the situation without laughing out spontaneously. It wasn't necessary to wake me up, but for the others, let me give my honest compassion :)

I was watching the monitor with red eyes at forenoon, but I was totally sure, that I wouldn't stand up from the computer until my music would be finished. In the meantime Addario (a good, old friend) had arrived (moral and photo support), who had been at a party the last time perhaps in 2000, but we could successfully attract him to that party, and this wasn't enough - he brought videos about Flag 2000 party right for Gargaj, which contained TrX within a funcompo, where he made a striptease-show on the stage. That was enough for taking these hardcore frame-sequences to the projector on the request of the public excitement.

It seemed that I drank something - noticed about the brain-buzz - in turn, I truly didn't drink and I wasn't hungry either, but it was already 11 o'clock. "I'll be ready in a short time", I thought. Inno and friends had gone to bring some meal - surprise. "I won't even eat while I'm not ready", I said. However, Sampi got ready, he showed the result and in my opinion that came out great, it was the perfect opposite of my work, because his stuff was adequatly obfuscated, sometimes slow, melancholic in every aspect, sometimes hardcore, but mine was - as we know - beep-beep fast breakbeat and I named it 'snot-breakbeat', 'cause it had too many melodies (and I don't know why, I think it's not allowed on this genre, is it? :) Furthermore, it had got a breaktrance modality from Gargaj, and (that was the best) a "citizen trance" qualification from Crm :) I was glad for both thing, but mainly for the fact, that we wouldn't agree with trying to define the genre.

Meanwhile, the people were changing near me at the next table -

Sampi had gone away, BoyC arrived, who asked a little bit doubted about what (or about which part of the Addict?) he should talk during his presentation. I couldn't answer it, but he could find out soon, then started to make several objects in order to demonstrate, and shared a pepper chips, which from the eating was binding.

The moment had come, yeah, I was ready! Let's render it to wav. Certainly, the first render became misshapen, so I decreased the gain, more 15 minutes. No problem. It was completed, copy to pendrive, rush to the stage, on the projector "what-the-hell-is-that", they not only copied the videos from Addario's pendrive, but such pictures were too, which showed me when I was 16 years old. "OMG - I go in just in time and see exactly this."

At last, we had got loose from the machines and could go to the social life to the others - hi infodesk, hi Maxie!

At this time, there were much more people than before, the Exceed-buffet became increasingly popular. I didn't know where to go then. We breathed some fresh air on the court. BoyC had just been kept busy by Inno, who needed the exe from the Addict source, so they spent a little time with it while sitting on the seat. Addario photographed obsessed, being happy with his new machine. Ketyere and Every arrived, and they were also busy with making pictures about the happenings. Let's see along. I went inside for something and on the corridor, Vincenzo and Pohár stopped me with a microphone and announced that they were making an uncut interview, fine. They questioned me if I listened to Hardread Podcast, I asked them back how serious they were about that question, then showed the evidence, the list about it on my iPod (at this time it was just the #18 Podcast). I was aspersed meanly (following up, that it's only an audio report without picture), with "hm, I'm maybe one of a No Thanx fans too" (it's a Hungarian emo-band, "trendy" nowadays). If someone mentions a boyband, at least please let it be the Press Play on Tape, ok? But I showed to everyone that there wasn't emoscene in my playlist. The question sounded from somewhere: "How did you become connected with the demoscene?", then the well-turned answer came, while we decided to sit down outside. Reptile joined, then he saw the microphone and vainly tried to escape. Inno got into the same situation. Sometimes Vincenzo and others asked: "Should we switch it off, are you frustrated by it?" Wow, what a record will it be...

The voting was in order too, yay, the graphic compos had already beenheld, unfortunately we had missed them, just like the seminars. Despite it, I'm glad to see that there are shots from the drawings on the net-votesheet, so I can vote, and this is quite apractical opportunity. I ran to freeload a votecode to the infodesk, because I hadn't been there before. There were quite nice productions in the handdrawn gfx, Unreal's space traveller was impressive, Rascy's landsapce-feeling, Delilah's color collection were too, though reportedly the gfx wasn't big on the projector's screen, but that couldn't be seen on the votepage. The freestyle gfx compo was also nice, but in from the older times looms that there weren't 7-8 competitors on a graphic compo. In turn, compared to the last years, that became a mixed genre compo: in the handrawn two girls, in the freestyle three girls had qualified.

The idea of the ANSI/ASCII compo was great, and although it is an obsolete category 6 productions were released! Respect for all of these, because they surely needed a lot of time to make.

We were just standing at the infodesk when an outside broadcast with two members arrived, that was the Level up, a programme of fix.tv, and they bravely inquired, what they should do if they wanted to enter the party. Maxie guided them, they freeloaded badge, looked at everything inside, went everywhere, and almost bungled to the Hungarian RTL's filming, which just asked Murphy near a dazzle light. They interviewed many people, while waiting for Murphy to disengage. After it, they walked around again at the place to make a full summary of the party. In this summary, for example Reptile spoke, Gargaj, Murphy, Tomcat... Quite a good stuff arose from it, congratz guys!

"Uyay", the tracked music compo was coming soon. I started being excited. We took our seat inside. In the tracked music compo there were only 5 competitors, although, considering it is an obsolete category, wasn't bad either. We laughed at TrX's music (we didn't know that it was his music at this time) and he won the compo with it.

After a short break, the streaming music began, I'd already been endangered by madness - I felt it a long time before... Xeno sat before us, to the first row, and told me, he was disqualified and I could hardly find out the genuineness of this announcement, to believe it or not, 'cause he sometimes grinned maliciously when saying it, but you never know, it seemed possible *yaaaaaargh*. Among the first 10 competitors - maybe affected by the sound system, the bass was on max and just at the limit - a little monotonity was discoverable on average, I know that the music has to rock, but... listening at home several parts of it sounded quite different. Truth to tell, there were more affable ones too, however the bigger part sounded plain in the first 10 songs.

At the second 10 songs, the compo started up a bit, "hú", Nagz released music too, SlySpy, Deansdale, Woland, RiaN, all of

them classic, old names in the scene. The I'm in love with Rocky Balboa, the Daemon city, and I got to like Sampi's style too (No remedy). Xeno took my song after his song, I was thinking about why it was there, and couldn't believe, when it started to sound. Yes, I've done it! After this, nothing else is important, least of all, the position. Unfortunately, there weren't many voters at the music compo, generally many persons were hovering outside at these times. As I remember, there was a party earlier, where the loudspeakers were installed outside the compo-room too, just like at the corridors, although at a lower sound volume, but it would be worth to try e.g. next year, maybe that would make a major interest in it (I know, I have too many requirements).

After this, the Wii compo began, sakes! Countries were racing with each-other, moreover, nations! :) The Polish beat us 4-2 in tennis. That was fine, it seized the crowd for a while, although I didn't mind it, but it seemed a good idea.

Meanwhile, the people were arriving permanently, including Blogger's Unite: Tomcat and Athina got in too, hi everybody. Clubbing continued outside, then came the 256 byte intros and the 4k compo, where, in turn, this segment was quite strong, I "caught flies", as I'm lay in it, "and-how-did-they-do-that", liked it much, at first I couldn't choose. Seeing Digimind's 256 byte, the Pixel town, the crowd was almost raging. At 4k, the absolute wtf production was the winner 1k, TBC. I truly didn't understand, how they had done that; I certainly would like to listen a mini-seminar about it, although I'm not a coder, but it would be interesting. Beyond this, the other production that was memorable, was the Rebels one. In the 64k compo, there was only one competitor.

Rob is jarig can't be missed, before the democompo, they were rampaging and everybody bounced for it near the stage. "So dancing was solved." This gave the basic feeling. Tindome called to the dancing, who could be recovered from her swinging headpiece, but I stopped at half way with Maxie. That's a party, now then! :)

Now, that demo-sequence didn't succeed very well. To tell the truth, the United Force was impressive, but mainly because of its music, others will mention often, that "you are not supported by computers" in the future. Geri/Legendgrafix must haveearned a lot of time with putting acceptable backgrounds behind the texts,

but I couldn't catch the entity of it, as the text was readable poorly and changing. Wtf-feeling. The demo created by Allien Senses missed category in my opinion, they could put it to wild, but couldn't understand why was it in the demo category, the public, in turn, wasn't in an enough philosophic (and patient) mood about it, which was understandable, so they gave a voice to it after a several minutes. The situation was similar to the Kosmoplovci, which wanted to be so obfuscated, that I almost discovered an intention to hypnotize in it, but the public kept themselves. We demand excite, dynamism, cube, prickly urchin, now then!

Wild demo competition: the Neutron Team's scenic finale won the pleasure of the public, repect for the video too. The fix.tv made record about this production showed at this compo, but unfortunately, at the end, the stage wasn't recorded from the suitable camera-angle, which would have really been fun, so the live version could be seen here (I recommend this)! The United Force produced a nice work again, beater vision, more beater music, I truly don't know which was the greater - that was good, now then!

End of compos, voting, going outside to spend the time, endless colloquy. I sauntered out and came to the the conversation of Neurotoxin, Xeno and Sir Moak talking about the minimal necessary instruments for music. A good sound card, and headphones are must-have parts of it, the former needed mainly for midi. With a little look-back to the 90's, and the GUS vs. SB period - when I had two sound cards because the mixing rate of GUS decreased above 16 channels with the increasing of tracks in FT2, and the SB had the 44 kHz at 32 channel.

Then I met with Athina and some other friends. We went inside to mass near the table. Sometimes the boys frightened away from our female themes, then joined some dudes again, getting more and more people. Jimmi, as usual, came there with pokerface to say a trivially comic conclusion, which has a method of notification near the content that makes you laugh at it.

Time passed, while we were waiting for announcement of results. The voting time elapsed until 2 o'clock after midnight, as I remember. Dudes hovered home, as the demo compo start was at midnight, but the results didn't come until 3 o'clock AM. Eventually, we entered to the projections at the compo-room, where I felt asleep for a half hour, couldn't stay awake further, the 72-hour waking not suitable for me, now then! Reptile asked, which streaming was mine, then said: "yay, I gave my vote for it". "Ou yeah, thanks a lot!"

The announcement of results was at 4 o'clock. Sometimes

surprising results appeared, in the most cases it was correct gradiation, but that isn't relevant. The good prods stay memorable for people. Lots of best resulted had stepped off, but the organisers usually took care, to pass the awards to the target persons in an alternative way.

At 5 o'clock morning, we were tired and amortized, but packed up in a blessed trance and oriented home, the time of the one-day sleep had just came :)

On the whole, the feeling of that party was one of the best in Hungary in the last few years, with more visitors than expected, more foreign visitors were there than the last years at anytime and the extra bonus was the lots of classic, old sceners who visited this party, about whom we had thought that we would probably never hear any more about. In addition to this, not all the veterans came who signed up to the party, so we hope that it will become a new tendency that old sceners come back and maybe the Hungarian scene can be revived, but at least, invoke its spirit, from time to time ;)

Ziona

This article was originally published on ziona.blog.hu in the Hungarian language. Thanks to Ziona for allowing us to publish her report in Hugi#34.