@party

If you can’t make it to the party you can watch our livestream here: https://scenesat.com/video

FYI, we’ve updated the compomachine:

i9-14900K, 64GB RAM, Nvidia 4070ti Super, Win11

We have a Win10 drive on standby and can also boot into Linux Mint

DIYDSP, aka Noah Vawter, will perform a live MIDI DJ set of demoscene music and 80s-period tunes. This mix will be performed on dual floppy-based MIDI players from the 80s. These Roland “music tutors” were originally designed to help musicians practice classical music—but in this performance, Noah will hijack their tutor features to create twisted, lo-fi, surreal interleavings of demoscene jams, 8- to 16-bit home computer music, and 80s pop classics… all filtered through the charming (and often campy) lens of General MIDI.

Noah didn’t set out to make music with a MIDI player. The idea sparked after decades of sitting at office desks, scrolling eBay during 3PM insulin dips, procrastishopping, and fantasizing about setting up a quaint, adorable MT 90S next to his monitor to blast cheesed-out renditions of his favorite songs. Then, one fateful afternoon, he overrode his inner anti-hoarding coach and “pulled the trigger”—never guessing it would awaken his inner musical mad scientist.

The first time he fired up a 3.5″ disk that came with the unit, he realized these machines had hidden depths. What looked like cute little practice boxes revealed themselves as note-spraying oddity engines—capable of gentle showers or full-on turgid MIDI fumigation, all delivered with signature Japanese precision. With features like looping, transposing, tempo shifts, and individual channel mutes—all accessible via dedicated key presses—they’re surprisingly expressive. Okay, yes: the labels are in Kanji, and certain operations require awkward multi-button combos that challenge his currently splinted finger… but once he saw the digital tempo display on that LCD, he was hooked. A second unit was quickly acquired—another undervalued gem—unlocking seamless transitions and dual-deck chaos.

As for the music: MIDI isn’t the native format for most demoscene material, so he’s had to wrangle a quirky toolbox to convert C64 SID tunes, Amiga MODs, and PC .XM files into something playable. Naturally, the sound changes. In some cases, he’s corrected for conversion quirks; in others, he’s looped raw bits like audio collage. And just to twist your temporal lobe: this entire set could have been performed exactly like this 30 years ago.

After the compo entry deadline we will have a spatial audio performance in the Artisan’s Asylum gallery by Natalie Epstein-Hogue:

“Natalie Epstein-Hogue is an interdisciplinary musician, artist, and technologist. Her work engages with urbanism, domesticity, and humanism within tech. Through electronic mediums, Natalie seeks to reflect the human experience. She works with expressive control and programming bespoke digital instruments, building up a deeply personal sound-space from first principles.

Her 2024 Album Comfort Objects is a synthesis-driven work, seeking to cultivate a soundscape of comfort and healing, in spite of a tumultuous and traumatizing reality. Dealing with themes of grief, PTSD and marginalization, and squaring them with a desire to create beautiful things, to love deeply, and to cultivate peace as a radical act.

Comfort Objects explores “Hyper Consonance” as a tonal palette. Inspired by composers like Ben Johnston and Marc Sabat, Natalie uses harmonic spectra and fractional harmony to create novel textures that are resonant and resolved; the sonic equivalent of a warm blanket.”

The partyserver is now online. If you are attending the party, votekeys will be distributed on-site. If you would like to submit a remote entry, please contact us for the address and a vote / upload key. Thanks!

“The Amiga 500 is a demoscene legend. But if you didn’t grow up with one, where do you even start? In this session, I’ll walk you through everything you need to begin coding your own A500 demos. We’ll look at the essential resources and build a hands-on example that talks directly to the Amiga hardware. No assembly required, if you’re comfortable with C then you’re good to go. I’ll demo on Windows, but the setup can be easily adapted to Mac or Linux.” 2-3pm, Saturday June 21st