 |
Send This Project |
 |
Leave a Comment |
 |
Appreciate It! |
 |
Share This |
Campus Party Geek Parade
Statistics
Created: 05/27/08
Last Edited: 07/23/08
Views: 783
Appreciations: 28
Comments: 1
From: Roc Herms's Portfolio
CAMPUS PARTY. AM3N.
The toll on AP-7, Valencia, Monday, 23rd of July, 2007.
Amongst all the vans, Renaults and the old Mercedes with French licence plates packed full and on their way to Algeciras, I start noticing another kind of a pilgrim. His trunk, and the entire car for that matter, is about to burst from all the chips, cables, hard drives, plasma screens and gigabytes of information. His pilgrimage is quite different, but not any less religious.
Valencia hosts for the eleventh time one of the most important electronic entertainment events in the world, the Campus Party. During this one long week all the enthusiasts, no matter if they are into astrology, robotics, or admire digital creation, whether they work as software developers, or are free software fighters or modding artists, gamers or simulation freaks, they are all going to sleep at the same place, eat from the same plates, and connect to each other to form a network of more than 6.000 computers.
Amongst all the vans, Renaults and the old Mercedes with French licence plates packed full and on their way to Algeciras, I start noticing another kind of a pilgrim. His trunk, and the entire car for that matter, is about to burst from all the chips, cables, hard drives, plasma screens and gigabytes of information. His pilgrimage is quite different, but not any less religious.
Valencia hosts for the eleventh time one of the most important electronic entertainment events in the world, the Campus Party. During this one long week all the enthusiasts, no matter if they are into astrology, robotics, or admire digital creation, whether they work as software developers, or are free software fighters or modding artists, gamers or simulation freaks, they are all going to sleep at the same place, eat from the same plates, and connect to each other to form a network of more than 6.000 computers.
Pavillion 1, row 121, seat 52. A plastic chair with a tiny cushion, an Ethernet cable and a power socket is all that I find in my designated area. Actually, that’s all I’ll need during the next few days. I’m in.
I only need to do a quick search and click in order to start downloading which ever thing, with the amazing speed of 50 Mb/s. Movies download in half a minute. I don’t know whether it’s because it’s free, or is it the greed or the mad collector desire, I just don’t get why they need such vast quantities of porn or movies they’ll never see in their lives, but still, it’s addictive. Just as the chat channel where you can offer or find just about everything �" from a gaming partner to drugs or used panties.
It’s the first night of the event and the people are excited. After a sound of a trumpet the people started to get up and scream as if they were in some state of collective hypnosis. During the entire week these moments of euphoria repeated many times without any warning.
Quake, Counterstrike, Warcraft or FIFA tournaments began in complete silence and with the players acting quite distanced, but would end in quite an explosive manner. Many think that it’s only kids that play the games, but that couldn’t be further away from truth - there are many different sorts of true professionals. There’s folk that train 15 hours a week and travel around the world showing off their talents, all sponsored by hardware companies. If sport is the workout for the muscles, this one is for the brain. The videogame industry has already left behind the football, film and the music industries. “Halo 3” ran over Harry Potter and Spiderman in only three days. The Atari generation is already in their thirties and many of them never stopped playing. Consoles such as Wii opened the market and took in the ones that never held a joystick in their hands in their lives.
Wandering around the narrow corridors I notice how slowly the people begin to mark their territories. Coca-cola cans, pizza boxes, DVD spindles, sleeping bags, pets, cables, more cables… They began folding their nest and their computers symbolize their well protected prodigy-egg. The Modding area is by far the most spectacular one: neon lights, transparent towers, liquid refrigerators, tetris-shaped computers, or the ones built inside pirate boats or microwave ovens… The level of creativity is absolutely overwhelming but the taste in aesthetics is questionable.
During the week the pace never slows down. The people are playing around the clock, eat and sleep in front of their computers. Chat, navigate, program, play, download movies, watch movies, burn movies… There are other activities that go from astrological observations through robot competitions and photo-rallies, tech-conferences… all the way to paintball matches in the national army stand. The soldiers look quite ridiculous in that context; wearing their uniforms and having all the merits and medals pinned on. At the same time their presence is nothing but game itself. It still sounds like science fiction, but the first crewless airplanes already survived Irak. If the army is looking for virtual soldiers, what other place better than the epicentre of CounterStrike pros.
There is absolutely no notion of time. Some compare this to being in a monastery in a closed order.
If the technology is the new drug the geeks are going to take over the world, in case the already hadn’t by now.
|
Send This Project |
|
Appreciate It! |
Other Projects From
Comments