A thought for parties

S. Jenkins

Life. Even though we feel it all around us every instant of our existence, we fall into analisys of it only in certain fugitive seconds, while forgotting about its essence most of the time. Philosophers have intended to give some certain clues about life itself, but, as usual in that non-scientific area of knowledge, the result is a bunch of different, often contradictory, ideas impossible to sort by a criteria reflecting their appropiate approach to reality. That is what gives us the possibility to select some of these ideas and, forgetting momentarily about the other ones, build up our reasonings without the fear of being accused of non-valid evaluation of the world we live in.

Life. Some men in mankind history have considered it as a preparation for an existence after death, while others reduced it to a simple consecuence of biological mechanisms. Life even thorough all the possible considerations about it may be considered as no more than a sequence of experiences. A line crowded of images, sounds and feelings beginning on the time of our birth and ending on expiration. If we take one of those finite sections out of the line, both of them will become then out of significance. The experiences of a certain moment and how are preceived, are the direct consequence of the past ones and those to happen will be influenced by the ones we are living now.

Experiences. Reality bends to our perception in order to become analized, assorted, archived in our memory and recalled from there in any time from now to, maybe, eternity. Reality itself is captured in a subjective way by our senses and then filtered thorough an unconceivable amount of nerves, thoughs and subjectivity before we can even take conscience of the launch of our "probes" to explore what does surround us as far as we can perceive it.

Can experiences be processed and then package them in order to deliver them to other individuals expecting them to restore all what was contained on the original perception? As far as we know, and, at least by now, the answer is not. Whatever process we select to encode the transmission of our own life to others will isolate certain qualities from the whole thing and, furthermore, the experience itself will be only depicted in a very general way to others. How can we give others something more than a description of our feelings and how them painted with a rainbow of colours the perceptions we got. By now, it is impossible to ensure that we can give to another person the complete values enclosed in our life.

Parties. They are part of the life of most sceners. These events are the social culmination of the demoscene culture. Sceners from near and far lands become united to enjoy scening, competitions and, what may be more important, the feeling of being part of a not so isolated, small and strange comunity. Over a few days, sceners get a complete bunch of experiences, from the feeling of friendshipness to the incredible sensations born from the emotion of taking part in a compo while knowing the other participants and, usually, getting their recognaissance when winning in any category.

Can parties be enclosed and packaged thorough internet in order to make them reach to places all around the globe? Well. It does depend of what we want to transmit. If we want only to make compos where participation comes from sceners all around the world, well, it is certainly possible, but, surely, we cannot make then the participants to enjoy the convivence present in parties. We also cannot avoid that, for most of the people, involved in "virtual parties", results from compos will be no more than a table of sorted people. You can, obviously be above or below other sceners, but, as long as you have no real contact with the others, your perceptions about those parties will be reduced obviously and will be different from those obtained from traditional parties.

Can then we assume that online parties can substitute parties as we have known them up to now? In my humble oppinion no. We can build up a scene community where both online parties and traditional ones take part in our culture. Each one will have their role but by no mean will one substitute the another. Online parties will have the advantage of allowing the whole scene community to join without having the restrictions of geography or personal situation. At the same time, traditional parties will have the function of improving the structure of local scenes and getting along people not only close in their thoughts, but also in their residential place.

Future. What does it hide for parties? No one can say, but evolution will be present in the next stages of demoscening as well as up to now. The results? They will be interesting to see...

S. Jenkins