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Alternative
Party Helsinki 2005
by Ian Smith
It was that time
of year again, time to be Alternative at a different
kind of computer party, location - Gloria Helsinki;
and time for my yearly holiday in Suomi Finland.
I was up early Friday morning and got to Heathrow
Airport at about 06:00. I was getting the second
flight direct to Helsinki.
The flight
was painless, there being plenty of free rows
of seats on the plane. A Finnair stewardess
saw I was falling asleep, so suggested I lie
down on one of the available rows. For the in-flight
breakfast I hadn't specified I was vegetarian,
luckily it was omelette and mushrooms for everyone,
a good start! A short sleep later and we were landing,
after what seemed like half an hour for the
whole journey.
My uncle
picked me up from the airport and took me to
his place in the suburbs. I'd have a shower,
then lunch with him, relax a bit indoors and
he'd take me to Gloria for about 06:00-ish. There
wasn't a lot of snow in Helsinki this year,
and it actually felt warmer than the London
I'd left behind. It was crisp but much better
than the damp cold of England.
At Gloria,
the venue for Alt 05, which is actually an old
cinema, I looked around for CiH and Felice,
couldn't see them so I hung around smoking at
the door. After ten minutes Felice came in with
a Finnish friend, Parvo (apologies if the spelling's
wrong). I set up my laptop upstairs at the front
on the balcony, in between Felice and Parvo.
To the left were various booths which I suppose
where for the extra-paying movie-goers
of yesteryear, now filled with modern technology,
and its operators.
There were
the various acts and competitions as usual this
year. One synthesizer band played various
TV show themes, mainly sci-fi inspired. There
was a competition for music videos, all done
by various flowering talents. Three notable
videos, a rendition of What a Wonderful World
to images of chimneys
billowing out smoke and police violence; a hardcore
techno-ish tune with rap, accompanied by film
of computer hardware being smashed up with various
blunt implements (we've all almost been there!);
and finally a trance tune with amazing rendered
graphical mindscapes.
This year
there was wireless internet, and I was able
to connect my old PIII laptop by Ethernet. It
sure was good surfing the various Atari sites
away from home, and I could even check my e-mail!
Speaking of Ataris at the show there were a
couple of Falcons. I didn't bring mine because
of the inconvenience of taking it there and
back each night. There were also for the retro-sceners
some Amigas and various 8-bits. Of course some had Apples and PCs as
Alt encompasses all areas of computing, both
new and old. And it's nice to see for the competitions
people on the 8-bits aren't scared to go against
today's powerful machines. I suppose it shows
the substance
of the demos is greater than the contents of
the machines.
I came
for the second day when the competition results
were being announced but promptly fell
asleep in the chair. I woke up at about 23:30,
so missed it all. Anyway I'll check the web
site
to see if any of my favourites have won.
All in
all it was a great little holiday, and a good
time to catch up with the relatives. I spoke
to one of the organizers and it seems like this
was the last Alternative Party, due to the financing
of the show. Apparently this year not as many
people came which has left them in the red.
It's a shame as the two times I've been it has
been very enjoyable, and different as the name
implies. Hopefully something will be sorted
out, and I'lll contradict my above words and
say I've got a feeling it will go ahead at some
time, in some form, it's too good not to, well
let's hope so!
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