the scene behind a curtain
(c) setok/aggression

everything really started out one spring evening. i got a call from somebody, probably nosfe, to come out to a nearby pub - sizzle. apparently everybody who was anybody was there, there was good music and a russian spectrum scener. i considered this proposal only for a moment. it's not every day that you get to meet a russian spectrum scener. i quite remember how pavel, or xpasha, decided to meet finland but there he was anyway. the bar was hot and not particularly pleasant, but they were not lying: the music was good, so i decided to get myself a beer and sit myself down.

now the russian scene was a real mystery to everyone. the infamous iron curtain affected people in more ways than one. indeed, we were barely even aware of a scene there. speaking with pavel, i realised computing life there was much more active than had previously been thought. i think an interesting question is, how did the scene reach russia? did some western ideas manage to seep in through the holes in the curtain, or did the russians develop their scene independently? perhaps the scene somehow reflects something more fundamental about the nature of humans. something that is built into us genetically. the need to create, whatever the hurdles. the urge to demonstrate our own achievements to others in the hope of gaining respect. maybe the only mystery is how it happens in exactly the same way across the borders: tight code, design and thumping music.

nosfe and co. had been telling pavel about this funny, unimportant thing we call the alternative party in the hopes that the word would spread to russia and we'd see a nice influx of sceners we knew nothing about. pavel, in turn, was telling us about cafe. a russian party? with speccy people? i was interested. after all, that's how i started with computers: on my good old zx spectrum.

to cut a long story short i ended up in a city called kazan with my friend, tuomas toivonen. in a way it was quite a humbling experience visiting russia for the first time. just over ten years ago russia was under strict communist rule. entering would most likely have been quite an operation. yet, it was not quite obvious how the change had affected the people themselves. how much was positive? how much negative? many towns we passed in the train were really quite run-down. paint was peeling off the walls, old equipment rusting in yards and roads turning to muck. that vast stretches of russia suffers from poverty was saddeningly obvious. still, despite all that, most whom i talked with said that even though times were tougher now, they would get better. according to them, russia will be some day be better than ever before. i guess freedom, in all its forms, is more important than we realise in our everyday lives.

once in kazan itself, our reception was extremely welcoming. it seemed as if everyone who was in the area had come to help us off the train. the friendliness was unlike anything we've seen before. it continued in that fashion throughout our stay, with people always willing to show us around or shake our hand. some even wanted autographs!

obviously our first priority was to get the bags somewhere, ie. an appropriate hotel. it turned out that there was a major tatar conference taking place in kazan at the same time as cafe, so finding a hotel room was definitely more difficult than had been expected. a word of warning for anyone planning a trip there next august: i understand the conference will be held at the same time again, so book your room well in advance.

that aside, we did get quite a glance at the city and its architecture. it had that run-down dusty feel that all russian towns seem to have, but at the same time change was clearly taking place. large construction projects were commencing and buildings were being fixed up. with tuomas we agreed that there is a lot of potential in kazan. they clearly have the most important thing any place can have: hope and belief in the future. the will to make things better. if you have that you can accomplish anything. this was especially clear when walking down the main street, where a lot of renovation was going on, and some already complete. just squint your eyes a bit and marvel at the splendid architecture around.

finally we managed to get a room and could begin to relax. during our trip we came up with a rather crazy plan: as we were the first finns to visit (indeed we were the first from a country which hadn't been part of the soviet union), we just had to make a demo. note that neither me nor tuomas had ever made a demo before in our lives, although i've done the odd little routine back in the good old days. still, we felt we had to contribute somehow. so quite a lot of time was spent trying to get sdl to work, creating music, playing around with routines and desperately attempting to collect something together.

with our minds set on making a demo we reckoned the best place to be was the party place. the party hadn't officially started yet, but we were kindly invited to come and see the place while the organisers were setting everything up. from the moment we stepped in it was obvious that russian parties had quite stark differences from the finnish and western european ones. the organisers had rented a hall which had been an old theatre building and instead of the rows of tables and computers one has grown used to, there were only chairs pointing towards the spot where the big screen would be. the real reason for this would only later become clear. a bk demo or two later we were back at the hotel, enjoying much-needed rest.

the next day we packed all our stuff and headed off to the party building again. tonight, in proper party fashion, we would sleep over at the part building. this seemed to please the russians no end: we were proving that we were truly part of the crowd. the day was really hectic. we had our laptops with us and spent a lot of the time coding. this was apparently very strange for the people at the party. apparently in those parts of the world, people do not code demos at parties, which is almost the opposite of what we are used to (although this is changing in western europe too). most people were sitting around chatting and enjoying themselves.

however, we weren't restricted to work alone. during our time there we had somehow become minor celebrities. not because we're particularly star-like but i guess simply for our long and adventurous trip and because nobody from the "outside" had ever visited. we even got interviewed by the local tv-stations, talking about the scene, our trip and even drugs. it was also our goal to try and market our own event, the alternative party, as we have yet to see any russian people there, or even any spectrum demos.

now, russians and other eastern countries are famous in the scene for primarily one thing: spectrum demos. the sinclair machine has mostly been forgotten by the western demo scene in its worship for the commodore 64. not so for the russians. they have quite successfully managed to battle the limitations of the platform like 8\times 8 colour blocks and even used them to their creative advantage to produce some astounding and original demos. they would not disappoint us this time either, with the spectrum demo compo clearly being the highlight of the event. we really need to see more of that at the alternative party.

it's not just the z80 assembler that amazes, either. the eastern scene is not content with the old rubber keys and beeps of an original speccy. in fact, the real sinclair spectrums are not even that common there. instead they have a bewildering amount of clones and super-clones with hefty modifications.

i'll always remember the discussion i had with one speccy artist, whose name i have unfortunately forgotten. it was like a scene from the film ghost dog: he didn't speak any english and my russian is even worse. still, we managed to get on quite well. he was very eager to show his work and the paint program he uses on the speccy. i asked him why he was using an emulator. i thought that was a fair conclusion based on the fact that the software was running in a vga monitor from a gray mini-tower. the question had to be translated, of course, but he then looked at my strangely for a moment and replied, "it's not an emulator, it's a spectrum". then the full realisation of the russians' ability to extend their speccies hit me. not only was this machine in a mini-tower and connected to a proper monitor, it also had a hard drive and two 3.5 inch disk drives.

another interesting point is that linux really does not seem to be very popular in russia. with the tight budgets there i would've imagined it to be a good choice but the availability of pirated windows copies really cancels linux's cheap price. however, many people were fascinated by the debian installations running on our laptops so we did get a good chance to spread the word. unfortunately we were somewhat unprepared in one respect: we had only a few linux demos downloaded and my laptop would only work properly with fit's one day miracle, the others requiring full-screen mode. later on we managed to get a few mfx productions running too. everyone was very eager to see what linux could do and they crowded round for the show time after time. hopefully linux, and other alternative operating systems, will slowly become more popular in russia as they have around the world.

during the evening we were presented with the normal mixture of compos: music, graphics, chip music, ascii graphics etc. a few things can be said about these. it was clear that russians have quite a different taste in music than many of my friends. many of the tracks were rock or metal and anything that approached electronic music was deemed to fail. it reminded me of the late 80s when i came to finland and everyone and their grandmother was wearing an iron maiden t-shirt. not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. it was just one more difference in our cultures.

another thing that i really have to point out: they had ansi and ascii graphics competitions. the only real difference here was that the ansi graphics were colour and so-called ascii was 2-colour black and white ansi. in other words, almost all the entries in the ascii graphics compo did not use ascii but ansi characters (or perhaps ibm). just a small hint to the organisers for the future...

as night arrived we realised why russian sceners don't need computers at their parties and what the few tables were really for: vodka. oh, finnish sceners drink at their parties too but they still claim the focus to be computers and coding. the russians have quite gladly ridden themselves of all those unnecessary extras and have concentrated all their efforts on one thing. poor tuomas and me were still trying with our symbolic effort to complete a demo. finally we just had to give up. nobody else in the hall was touching their computers and they were beginning to think we were slightly queer. so in the end we joined the merry bunch sitting at the tables snacking, chatting and enjoying their alcohol. the strong sense of friendliness continued and our glasses were never left empty. in the morning we were rewarded with friendly headaches.

there were few surprises in the results of the competitions, including the fact that our demo did quite poorly. there were several good speccy demos with interesting concepts but the most technically advanced, by a crew called placebo, won fair and square. on behalf of the alternative party, we gave them one free train ticket to finland and free entrance. unfortunately we didn't hear from them after the party and for some reason they didn't show up. too bad. i believe they would have done well in our demo compo.

after the party we had a couple of days to get to know kazan better. we had a nice guided tour of the historical fortress and heard stories of its past (thanks to one of xpasha's friends - i'm really bad at names). we also tasted a wide range of local dishes, topped with some cheap beer and vodka. as an extra note i'd like to say i was positively surprised by the russian girls. maybe we just looked odd to them, but on several occasions they came up in a friendly manner to chat - something i've never noticed happening here. i also quite prefer skirts, especially of the shorter kind, to the trousers everyone in finland seems to be wearing these days. maybe we'll meet more of them in the future.

well it was a hectic trip and we were finally glad to be heading back home. at the same time we had really enjoyed being there and meeting all those fantastic people. the experience is something i will surely never forget and which will enrich my life for years to come. a great big thanks to everyone involved: xpasha, max, adam etc. and to elph for inviting me to write this article, which will hopefully still make it to the mag. i hope to meet you all again.

references [http://www.altparty.org/]