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»CL0: Symphony 2001 Party Report
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Written by »CL5:Makak »CL6:of »CL5:Madwizards »CL6:& »CL5:Reason
»CL1:We used to say that the situation in
Poland was very good. »CL6:We had many good
parties and our meetings were filled
with a friendly atmosphere and had a
fantastic climate.»CL1: However, the
situation is not as bright as it used
to be and even in Poland, one of the
most important scene countries, the
time span between the parties
increases considerately. After
Satellite 2000, which was held in
November 2000, the first opportunity
to at end a real scene party was
Symphony 2001, that was held on
Sep. 14-16th 2001 in a small Polish
town called Trzcianka. (Hey guys, try
to spell it!)
As always, the journey was long and
hard. I am in the unfortunate
situation that I live in Northeast
Poland, more precisely in »CL7:Bialystok,
and although there were some talented
sceners in my city in the past, e.g.»CL1:
Animal or Ranger, Bialystok is now an
almost scene-free area. The only Amiga
sceners who live there are Emers of
Appendix, Codi of Appendix, and I. I
guess I do not have to tell you what
this means! »CL8:Even though Poland is not
a big country, I always have to travel
a lot to get to a party. This time was
no exception.»CL1: I was travelling on my
own, so I decided to take another
train and meet Noxis of Mawi, Hakon of
Whelpz, Cahir of Whelpz, and Fenek of
Arise in Olsztyn. The trip was long -
it took 13 hours by different trains.
We did not want to booze on the train,
so we arrived in Trzcianka without any
troubles. We were quite surprised when
we realized that there were about 30
other sceners on "our" train, whom we
had not yet meet. Anyway , in this
numerous team, we reached the party
place.
It was really hard to find the party
hall, but finally, after a 1-hour walk
around the town, we entered the party
hall. The building housed one of the
biggest Discos in the city, so it was
the perfect place for the scene party.
In addition, the surroundings were
wonderful - forest, lake, camping
houses - everything an ordinary scener
needs. »CL7:The hall was nice and had a bar
with very low prices (only 3 PLN,
about 1.50 DM, for good beer!), a nice
room to sleep in (the bars kitchen),
and tables in the main party hall.»CL1:
Those who had more money could sleep
in the camping houses, which were very
nice and cheap. The organizers had
done a very good job here, and in the
beginning, everything looked
fantastic...
The party started as usual, there were
not that many people yet, since we
were the first to arrive, except for
those who had been there since
Thursday to help organize the meeting,
of course. Walking through the party
hall, I met my mates one by one. »CL6:I had
to talk with everyone for a while,
drink a beer, or just have a hug.»CL1: We
spent most of the time outside the
hall, boozing, near the entrance.
Somehow, it became a bit boring, but
soon someone was struck with a good
idea. We saw Silents car outside the
hall and began abusing a rather drunk
Azzaro: "Hey, you would not jump on
top of that car, would you?". After
all Azzaro said: "Would I not?",
climbed on top of the car and started
jumping on it. Then he intended to
from the roof onto the bonnet, but
being rather drunk, he did not have
full control of his balancing skills
and hit the windscreen instead of the
bonnet. He was a bit confused, so he
took a branch from the nearest tree,
and put it BEHIND the wiper! Not
surprisingly »CLB:Silent was rather unhappy
when he saw the damage Azzaro had
caused his car.»CL1: Therefore , we made a
quick collection, and donated money
for the new windscreen to Silent. It
is now a very famous story in the
Polish scene; notice that at Delirium,
the next party, a wild demo appeared
with Azzaro on a bonnet...
The rest of the day went with constant
boozing. Many people appeared,
Jimi'che had to leave and the
organizers were showing various scene
productions on bigscreen. After some
hours, I decided to go to sleep.
Usually I do not sleep on parties, as
I find that two days are too short a
period to be missing even a little bit
of the action by sleeping. This time
the party lasted 3 days so I decided
to take a short nap.
»CL7:I was awoken by a horrible noise,
caused by the organizers, who were
showing Taxi 2 on the bigscreen.»CL1: It
could have been nice, if it was not
for the fact that the huge thing
standing next to my sleeping bag
turned out to be a giant loudspeaker.
In silence, I cursed the organizers
and started next day of party. Many
new people like Lothar, Juen, Embeat,
Piolek, and Stazi, appeared and as
usual, we had to talk for a while.
Then the first crazy compos started.
»CL8:Azzaro and Borys had prepared about 70
crazy competitions! About half of them
were carried out.»CL1: I cannot remember
all the competitions, so I am basing
this on Azzaros article for the next
Excess. We tried to hit a monitor with
a rock, we arranged a modem-throw,
firefighters' compo (»CLB:when we found an
old fire extinguisher we decided to
test if it was operational»CL1:), a hazard
compo, the unnecessary thing on the
party, where the organizers were
chosen as winners ;). Many of the
competitions failed due to various
reasons. The shopping cart compo
failed, because there was no
supermarket to steal the carts. The
2000 peso compo, where one should get
2000 Columbian peso from anywhere,
failed due to lack of that kind of
money in both banks and exchange
points. »CL7:Because the party was held
just after the attacks on WTC, we also
planned to make an "Osama Bin Laden
compo".»CL1: The intension was to create
two towers from empty beer cans and
then destroy them by throwing paper
planes into them. Unfortunately, this
compo failed because there were no can
beers in the bar only plastic mugs....
Since many of these compos failed, we
arranged many new compos. There was
the "flatron compo" (who can make a
monitor as flat as possible by
kicking), the "GSM compo" (destroying
a public phone until only the
microphone is working) that was won by
Grogon/PSL, the "Injury compo" (won by
Qix/Nah-Kolor after falling into the
lake, cutting his hand with glass and
hitting his teeth). Many may say that
these compos are stupid and have
nothing in common with the so-called
"scene". In my opinion, they are
always welcome at the parties, because
they make people feel relaxed and full
of scene motivation...
Soon it became dark, meaning that it
was time for the serious competitions.
»CL8:We were expecting many nice releases,
as there had not been any parties in
Poland since Satellite 2000.»CL1: Of
course , there had been the Abstract
and Addict anniversary, but those were
small PC events, which only few Amiga
sceners had visited. The music was
rather nice, in fact so nice that many
people started to dance on the scene.
I was there as well and I had a lot of
fun. »CL6:It is sad, that some people got
mad at us, supposedly because they
were not having as much fun as we, and
started to shout "get off the scene".»CL1:
Although that slogan is great, it is
sad that some people get furious with
others just because they are having
more fun. After the music compo, the
gfx compo was held. Most of the
pictures were nice, but there was too
much new-wave 24bit, huge resolution
pictures, and too less good, old
low- res 8bit pictures. The pictures
that are shown get worse and worse at
each party. Where did all those
graphicians, like Dzordan or Ra, go?
Finally, the intro compo started. The
Amiga compo had two productions, an
intro by Decree, and a short intro by
Appendix. Decrees production was nice,
and Appendix' was just an announcement
of Psychol pack, which Flapjack should
have on the scene, after a few years
of silence. »CL8:We were very surprised
that Mavey did not show anything, when
I asked him about it a day earlier, I
did not think that he was serious,
when he told me he did not have
anything.»CL1: That is too bad; we all hope
it is caused by the work he is putting
into a new, stunning demo for PowerPC
and 3D gfx cards. Last, but not least,
it was time for the demo compo. First,
the PC productions were shown. I do
not like those demos much. Although
they look great with 3D-acceleration,
they have no individual character. The
same 3D scenes, music ripped from
commercial songs (Grogon noticed
stolen music in two demos, and
suspected a third soundtrack to be
ripped as well). Then came the most
important compo, the Amiga demo compo.
There were four entries in this
category. »CL7: "Dog Star Descends" from
Amnesty was the first big production
coded by Crust.»CL1: I can still remember
his crappy intro from Satellite 2000,
and was perhaps expecting something
similar, but this was a »CL8:stunning
piece of work.»CL1: Even though the demo
was not as good as e.g. the
productions of Mavey or Kierownik, it
would be great if every new coders
debut looked like this! The demo was
filled with a dark atmosphere, it is
hard to tell, and you simply have to
watch it! The second demo was a rather
crazy production by a group called
WFMS. It was made as a joke, so best
if we do not talk about it. Now it was
time for the best two entries in this
compo. »CL8:The first was a demo made in
cooperation between Encore and
Nah-Kolor.»CL1: Those who has seen some of
Encores productions, was not
surprised. The demo looked exactly
like all of Encores other productions
meaning both good and bad things,
still too dark objects, and a dark
atmosphere. Then something appeared
which shocked people. After the warm
up at Assembly, where "Cool Bazzar"
was placed as no. 11, Mawi showed
something stunning. "Cruel Karma
»CL1:Forms", a demo running on PowerPC and
3D gfx cards, Permedia2 and probably
most of the Voodoo family, beat all
others without a doubt and most of us
agreed that it had also beaten the PC
demos, thanks to its great design.
»CL8:Kierownik showed some completely new
effects, MP3 music & 640x480 hi/true-
colour resolution. Every scener MUST
see this demo. »CL1:Although I was not a
great enthusiast of "Mawis School of
Design", I have made an exception with
this demo. Azzaros design combined
with 24-bit gfx and hi resolution
looks really nice. It is enough to say
that something unusual happened,
people demanded that the demo was
shown one more time just after the
compo. This does not happen often. The
last time something like this
happened, to my knowledge, was at the
Intel Outside party. Kierownik showed
us that he is now one of the best
coders in the scene; only Mavey and
Diamond can compete with him in
Poland.
Time passed nice and slowly, but
eventually we had to leave Trzcianka
and go back home. »CL8:The party was good
and there were not too many PC lamers.»CL1:
Although it was mainly a PC party,
only good & active guys from the PC
scene were present and »CL8:not some
12-year-old "internet-swapper".»CL1:
Everyone, who attended the meeting in
Trzcianka should be satisfied, and
those, who stayed at home should
regret their decision. »CL6:I have written
this party report for "Eurochart" to
encourage all the Western sceners to
visit a Polish party.»CL1: It is definitely
worth the couple of zloty, you will
have to spend on travelling and
entrance fees. I hope to attend the
meeting in Trzcianka next year, and to
see all you Western sceners in Poland.
»CLB: CYONCP - this time Satellite 2002!
»PIC:5.iff»