Riverwash 2010 Report
Written by Lazarus / Nah-Kolor
Last year's edition of the Riverwash party was quite successful. After changing location to Warsaw, due to much easier access, a lot of people showed up. This even exceeded the capacity of a small room of the "No Mercy" club. Among released productions you could find real gems such as the "Pulse" 256B intro by Rrrola. This year the event has been organized at the same place and at the same time of the year (3-5 September 2010). Was the party as successful as the previous edition? Let's find out.
Friday
There were no competitions scheduled for the first day of the event, but you could see demonstrations of older demos for the PC, Atari, and 8-bit machines. An additional attraction was Willy's (under the Zorandom nickname) liveact playing the Kaossilator. The whole show was sprinkled with visuals that appeared on the bigscreen. As it usually happens some people began dancing.
Another highlight of the evening was a concert by the Krzyz:Kross group, but this time in a reduced lineup, as only Marco Finito appeared on the stage (Rudy, the second member, was stopped at home by freshly married wife, hmm...). Anyway, he played and sang all their best known songs and, as a bonus, one new, played live for the first time. As previously, sceners continued to enjoy the music. A shortcoming, however, was that during the concerts the artists were not standing on the stage (which was occupied by the bigscreen), but just in front of it. As a result, the audience was dancing right next to the artist. It was very easy to disconnect cables, or pour beer on the equipment. Everyone could also take over the microphone and say something.
Speaking of beer: like the year before, the agreement between the organisers and the owners of the club assumed that participants would generate a high income at the bar (around 1500 EUR). For this reason, half of the value of entrance fee was returned in the form of poker chips, which could be exchanged at the bar for a beer. Nobody wanted the organizers to pay extra for renting the room, so the consumption of beer was high.
After the concerts, you could spend the night at the party place in the sleeping room or in nearby inexpensive hotels.
Saturday
Thanks to the warm weather, a large part of the event took place outside the club, in the beer garden. New people have been arriving at the place. You could replace the poker chips for a dinner. This year it was a fried sausage and a meat, both prepared in front of the club.
The first competition was scheduled for 15:00, but nothing interesting happened in the room. The event was taking place outside and took the form of large meeting, where compos are not so important. You could easily talk with friends (drinking another beer).
This lasted to around 20:00, when the first performer of the evening showed up in the room. It was "Ziomus z Psar" a.k.a. "Grill Attack", who played his most popular songs along with those from the new album. Ziomus' works mainly focus on the topic of barbecue. His performance was a great fun, the people sang and danced to the rhythm of dark-disco. After the concert you could buy a CD or take a picture with Ziomus, who turned out to be a very friendly person.
After the concert the music compo began. There were four entries in the chip music category, one more was submitted in the ST-03 category. The first was won by Aceman (with the song "Chill Your Chips") and the second by PSK with the song "Electro Lisa". In the most popular category of streaming music you could listen to 16 entries. Traditionally, several people began dancing to the songs presented. The winner of the compo was Traymuss and his song "Show Me Heaven".
Another highlight of the Riverwash 2010 was Gargaj's concert. He did not commit the mistake of previous performers and took a position on the stage, thereby leaving more room for dancing, while ensuring his own safety and the safety of his equipment. Like at the previous edition of the party Gargaj was no disappointment. He delivered a massive portion of breakbeat mixed with dubstep, gabba, and even hardcore. Such a large amount of energy in the air gave many people the strength to dance in front of the stage for almost 2 hours. The dance floor did not remain empty even for a moment. Great performance and no doubt it was one of the best reasons to come to Riverwash 2010.
Sunday
But this is not the end of attractions. The real party cannot do without competitions. Around 1:30 the show of graphics compos started. Entries were presented in three categories: Pixel Gfx (won by "Metropolis" created by Darklight), Newschool Gfx (first place went to Piotr Sokolowski with "Guardian" image) and Photo, won by Shexbeer and his photo called "Industrial Crane".
There were some problems with entries submitted to the exe compo. Not all productions have been tested to display on the big screen properly. For this reason, "Difuze", a 256B intro by Rrrola (ranked 1st), and "Do Not" by Umlaut Design were shown only on the monitor. It was a pity because, like last year, Rrrola showed another "impossible" to do production with interesting graphics and music!
The 4k intro category was won by very nice production by KK / DMA called "Quantum Core".
The combined demo category also did not proceeded very smoothly. The Amiga demo "Dust" by the Elude group (ranked 1st) was run without sound. Before the presentation of Nitro's demo, the audience had to watch on the big screen the process of archive unpacking, several attempts to configure the emulator, etc. which showed that the compo was not well prepared in advance.
Several demos in the demo compo took the challenge to use the theme of this year's party, which was 3D vision. Because they have been shown in anaglyph mode, and not all people had appropriate glasses, they were shown later one more time, after the distribution of additional pairs. You could see two entries in 3D: "Machineris" by Futuris (ranked 2nd) and "Futuricon" by Elude (3rd place).
There were 10 entries in the Wild / Anim category. First and second place have been taken by Tomasz "Traitor" Cechowski and his animations called "Killing Myself" and "Thesis". Although the two animations were actually better than the other entries, they were not made specifically for this compo, and were released before the party.
Just like a year ago, the 5 star voting system (by Ubik) was used. You could log in with the nickname and the ID number and rank all entries from all competitions. Too bad that unlike last year, the preview thumbnails were not available.
Summary
This year's edition of the Riverwash attracted many people, just like last year. Sceners were not disappointed. It is a pity that the organizers did a few mistakes. The lack of hardware and software preparation was noticeable during the compos and it was the reason of troubles with entries presentation. There were also long delays (approximately 6 hours) in party schedule. The previous edition was better prepared here.
This does not change the fact that the party can be considered successful. Numerous concerts, a lot of productions, an easily accessible place in Warsaw, a lot of people, a friendly atmosphere, everything you'd expect from a good party. At this point, thank goes to Fei, V0yager, Gorzyga and all who have helped: Borys, Simon, Yans, Marta, Gosia and others.
Lazarus / Nah-Kolor
Riverwash 2011 Report & History of Riverwash
Written by Voyager/Nah-Kolor
Translation from Polish to English by KBI/Elude
Where does this river lead to?
Riverwash was born in order to repopulate the rather deserted (read: after Symphony had officially been declared dead) landscape of Polish demoscene parties. The first edition, the main organizer of which was Fei/RR, took place in Szymocice, with surroundings giving an impression more resembling a meeting or a pool-party than a real demo party. Still, it has managed to attract quite a large crowd of sceners, as opposed to the very last Symphony edition, which was invaded by just about 50 people. In comparison, the number of participants in the first Riverwash edition had been close to 70. It was also directly connected to the grand comeback of Mr. Acryl and Anadune to Polish demoparties.
In terms of productions worth mentioning when it comes to Riverwash 2007, the demos 911 (by Anadune) and a never-ever published demo called Nameless created by a back-then-unnamed demogroup nowadays known as Elude are definitely up right there. Last, but by no means least, quite a nice 64 KB intro called Quantom Chaos by the group ALLien Senses is worth giving a shot (by the way, these two words, 'quantum' and 'chaos', seem to have already set themselves in tablets of Riverwash stones).
It should also be noted that the party featured as many as two separate categories for module competitions - the latter was called "Soundtracker 20th Anniversary". The participants were asked to submit 4-channel entries that made use of only the original samples from the ST-01 diskette. Competition along these lines was also organized in the 2009 and 2010 editions.
Riverwash, as a party, evolved directly from a line of meetings called "R/R Meeting", so the main pressure was put on two competitions: wild and a new one - Kwit (sometimes referred to as Ridicule compo). From the very beginning, Riverwash was filled with concerts. The Wiekszy Obciach band played a gig during the first edition. A year later it was Krzys:Kross.
The 2008 edition of Riverwash was advertised with 3 coded invitations: one created by Elude for the Amiga platform, a second one by Tropyx for C64, and finally a 1 KB invitro was coded by AULD for PC. Then, a loud thunderbolt struck two weeks before the next edition of the party as it became highly probable that Riverwash 2008 might get cancelled. Well, guess what - this story had a happy end: someone went the extra mile and the party - a little bit more modest than originally planned - actually worked out. Taking a bird's eye view though, it's now considered to be one of the worst in the whole history of Riverwash. C64 has never seen such a strong light of day in the history of Riverwash - to mention some groups: Vulture Design, Black Sun and Tropyx contributed. As for PC: Fields of Gold by Anadune group, Dementia by Futuris (with final version never reaching the light...) and an atmospheric QI by Amnesty. A wild contribution called "Do it demo style!" by Teh Weeabooz is also definitely worth taking a peek.
In 2009 Riverwash underwent a major conceptual lifting, as the party location moved from Silesia to the centre of Poland, namely the capital city of Warsaw. The organizers team struggled hard to bring back the 256b intro competition and, apparently, their prayers were heard thanks to Rrrola, who visited the party and contributed Puls. KK/DMA took every single attender's breath away with his Quantum Flame. Hard Coders showed a CUDA demo featuring three soundtracks. You could also see two demos by Amnesty and a great production by Dimness.
Wiekszy Obciach played at the party again, and we could also see and hear Gargaj rock the place as a DJ. To finish the competition night off, DJs from "In Dark We Thrust" put a softening touch to the party atmosphere. The party visitor counter exceeded 100. A crack between the PC and the C64 demoscene started to become noticeable, as the Commodore platform started to have its own dedicated Silesia party event.
Riverwash 2010 took place in Warsaw again. It was this party where Elude showed their Dust and Futuricon (in 3D) productions the very first time. The Futuris team came up with a 3D demo called Machineris (the final version is still to come). Only two 256-byte intros this time (outstanding "Difuze" by Rrrola and amazing Gargaj's "Do Not"). In a combined intro competition, a 4KB jewel called "Quantum Core" created by KK/DMA was shown. Krzys:Kross and Gargaj again played at Riverwash 2010, followed by (debuting) Willy/GGS. Regarding the Wild category, you should definitely look at two awesome animations by Traitor. The party was, again, attended by more than 100 people.
Riverwash 2011 took place in Lodz (with most of the organizing team getting changed along the way). Fun fact: even though the name of the city stems from a "boat", there's not a single river to be found within the city borders. The party was filled with concerts (hello Gargaj, Krzys:Kross, Willy/GGS, Yerzmyey), demoshows (Amiga demoshow, 8-bit demoshow for ZX Spectrum and Atari platforms) and a presentation of a special 1.5h movie accompanied by dubstep rhythms montaged by Ubik. Ghostown presented the final version of their "Human Traffic" demo and a slideshow called "The Lost Pixellers". Gargaj brought a 256-byte fractal this time and Blueberry presented a zooming scroll within the same size limit. There was also a 256-byte intro in HTML. KK/DMA turned the crowds into a higher state of euphoria with his 4 KB remix of Chaos Theory. Maq with AceMan shared a great intro, too. Futuris again presented a fixed version of the Machineris demo, this time in 2D. For the first time at Riverwash, there was a gamedev competition and a single demo was presented for ZX Spectrum 48K. Finally, there was also a live audio/video feed broadcasted straight from the party-place. In parallel, Topy44 reported live via SceneSat. People counter? Over 120.
The next edition of Riverwash is also going to take place in Lodz. The location of the party-place will definitely be changed, as the previous one turned out to need a little more elbow-room. The presentation and vote-system will also have to face some heavy modifications. Some categories seem outdated and no longer needed and will most likely fade out from the Riverwash landscape (we're thinking here about Photo, Wild, Kwit competitions). But don't worry, newschool and oldschool demoscene phenomena will continue to have their place at Riverwash 2012. What would you say about an Ultimate Soundtracker 25th Anniversary compo taking place live at the place? Or perhaps it would be cool to be able to compete for the best music formula the algorithmic symphony could be fed with? Or the most easy-on-the-eye pixel shader? Or maybe you would be interested in coming down to the place and playing live for the public?
Voyager / Nah-Kolor