Riverwash 2010 Party Report

DemosceneDemo, Party, Review6 September 2010

Last year’s edition of 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 “Puls” 256B intro by Rrrola. This year the event has been organised 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.

Note: this article first appeared in Hugi#37 (also available on-line).

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) live act playing the Kaossilator. The whole show was sprinkled with visuals that appeared on the big screen. 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 line-up, 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 big screen), 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 organisers 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 “Ziomuś z Psar” a.k.a. “Grill Attack”, who played his most popular songs along with those from the new album. Ziomuś’ works mainly focus on the topic of barbeque. His performance was a great fun, many people sang and danced to the rhythm of dark-disco. After the concert, you could buy a CD or take a picture with Ziomuś, 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 his equipment). Like at the previous edition of the party, Gargaj’s performance did not disappoint. 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 Sokołowski with “Guardian” image) and Photo, won by Shexbeer and his picture 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 1^st), 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 proceed very smoothly. The Amiga demo “Dust” by the Elude group (ranked 1^st) 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 2^nd) and “Futuricon” by Elude (3^rd place).

There were 10 entries in the Wild / Anim category. The 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 stars” 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 organisers 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 a 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, thanks are going to Fei, V0yager, Gorzyga and all who have helped: Borys, Simon, Yans, Marta, Gosia and others.

Lazarus / Nah-Kolor