Thursday, August 03, 2006
Second Demo Display [Report In Progress, Part 3 Posted]

Yes, it finally happened. After weeks of dealing with all sorts of ridiculous problems, we were finally able to hold the second Demo Display, which turned out to be well worth all the trouble. Given the amazing experience of the first show, and the amount of positive feedback that I received, we decided to be a little more organized and do some actual preparation for the second one. [For anyone who might not know this, the first show happened out of the blue and based on a sudden mental spark that I had!] Although the preparations didn't exactly happen in the most smooth manner, but we managed to get things done and send out the news to our Engee and Artzee friends and post some flyers for the rest of the world, on time. As a result of that, the crowd was considerably larger than the first time. The show was huge....a huge emotional outburst. I don't think I had ever seen Artzeez and Engeez agree so much....let alone going crazy over the same thing. Once again my Artzee friends did an awesome job helping me running the show. In addition I had the luxury of having 2 very special friends with me, who came to Toronto just for this. Soren, Kay [KayOS], you guys rule.
I had actually came up with a solid list of the demos that I wanted to show this time, but as the crowd grew larger, we decided to prolong the show. As a result I was happily able to add a few more favorites to the list, including a couple of demos from the last display. So here's what we showed:
And of course to close the show we listened to a couple of great tracks:
  • Chloral Hydrate by aMUSiC [ASD]
  • Music On The Moon by aMUSiC [ASD] & Amigo [The Lab]
Now as you're suspecting I'm going to talk a little about the demos that we watched, and I'd be glad to know what you thought of each. The size of the crowd this time made it impossible for me to gather what everyone had to say about each demo, so lets do that here. But first I suppose I should mention a few facts, based on some interesting questions that I've received lately.
Nope, I'm not a scener, neither are most of the people reading this blog. I came to learn about the Demoscene just recently [although I had seen some rather old demos a while ago]. Yup, I code a lot, Yup, I do some graphic design too, but Nope, I haven't ever done anything remotely related to creating a demo. Currently most of the coding that I'm doing is Microchip Assembly anyway. Given the way I came across Demoscene first, [watching Iconoclast completely confused & without the slightest idea of what was going on and with my jaw resting somewhere on the floor the whole time and enjoying the experience immensely that is], I've developed a tendency to pay more attention to the eye-candy/ear-candy aspects of the demos. Same applies to most of my friends here. [Not that I can ever completely ignore the behind-the-scenes!] Basically, we gathered to watch the demos for the joy of it. :)
The people who were present at the first display, came to the second one expecting particularly to see some more ASD demos. That, and the fact that me and my gang are huge fans, were the reasons for us to start the show with ASD's trilogy [and to include 5 ASD demos in the show of course :D]. ASD's trilogy is a superbly artistic symbolization of the 3 basic elements: Air [Antidote], Fire [Aphorism] and Water [Ambience]. Given all the discussions that were raised among the crowd specially over the "fire", I believe I should present here the very helpful explanation that aMUSiC of ASD has posted on Pouet:
"The trilogy is focused on the Aristotle's element line of Aether, Fire and Water. Aphorism is the Fire part. You can control fire up to a certain extent, but fire is always unpredictable both in its movements and constraint. The various backbone synch points and imagery is depicting the control and constrain of the fire, while the distortions and artifacts are representing the randomness and unpredictability of the flames, that however begin with a seed.. the flammable material (which is the music and its frequencies). The style of the music is harsh and expands into a multitude of frequencies to show the wildness and mercilessness of fire." What seemed very interesting to me was, although to a rather minor extent, it was apparent that each part of the trilogy seemed to be more appealing to a group of people with rather similar tempers! I'd definitely appreciate it if you people let me know whether you observed something similar. What I do know is that a theater room full of people was on fire while watching each part of this masterpiece! :)

After a the trilogy, came the only Amiga demo of the show, Ocean Machine by The Black Lotus. Of course I was pretty curious to see what everyone would think of the Amiga demo and watch some reactions. And of course I wasn't disappointed; having enjoyed watching this demo as much as I have, naturally I was hoping that the crowd would enjoy it as well, and gladly I should say that apparently they did. It seemed that the scene with the black dancer touched the hearts of most of the viewers, and I really didn't have to go asking around to figure that one out. I just had to stand behind the panel and observe the reactions! ;) In addition, the incredible sound track of this demo turned into a common favorite.

The next demo to go on the screen was Tokyo by xplsv. Yeah the same bloody demo that got me mistyping [yeah I know that most of you know what I'm talking about since you all had your ball making a huge fuss out of my tiny typo! :P]; the significance being the fact that my speech skills resembled my spelling skills for a few hours after watching that demo. But hey, it wasn't just me! The colors, the awesome music and all the beautiful effects in this demo managed to create the Tokyo feeling for the whole crowd, and from what I could see, it was quite an enjoyable one too. Another interesting fact is that no one out of that crowd has so far told me that the demo was too slow for them. Anyone thought so? Let me know. Personally I think the slow pace was a must for this one, in order to have "the" effect. Anyhow; off to the next part.

Update: Since a lot of people were asking for this, do check aMUSiC's comment regarding the ocean machine lyrics. [Yup, half a gallon Mustard/day for me from now on!]

Important Update: Ok I have to add this here so it won't get lost in the comments pile: Starting from the show day, I've received so many "who did what in the where" questions regarding the producers of the demos, a lot of which I honestly don't know the answers to. True, I do a whole lot of reading up and tracking down, and I do have "some" info, but I can not possibly have the answers to the kind of detailed questions you seem to have. So I suggest that you check out the group pages on www.pouet.net and from there find the website URLs of the groups that you have questions about [that is if they have one], and you probably know what to do after that. I also have to mention this: NO I won't post those questions on pouet.net BBS. I'm still enjoying my life. If you like, you can try that yourselves. :)

[End of part 3]

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