Same procedure as every year. Our annual 2015 Tetris contest was a bit chaotic this time: Few players, unrecorded games, winners vanishing and so on. But fun nonetheless. And I won 2nd place. Whoo!
Here are the highlights. Enjoy!
Category: Local stuff
Hacker Jeopardy with Cocktails
3D printing demonstration at Assembly Hall
Oh noes weapons were produced with 3 D printers. I’m trembling with fear.
3D printed objects
Lounge decor
Lounge decor
Thias trying out Oculus Rift
LED Art
My busy schedule
I leave you with the visuals for now. Text will follow.
We are proud to announce that there will be a third Waldeck-Freakquenz festival this year on 13th-14th september 2013. I think we fairly established the awesomeness of this festival by now. 2012 was the best party yet.
We need more visitors to get out of this alive, though. Last time, we had a little over 100 paying happy visitors and we barely made it out in the black. If you would like Waldeck-Freakquenz to continue, bring more friends and family into the enchanted forest with you next time. Tell everyone you know about us. This way, more people will have a great weekend and the team of volunteers will be able to keep on organizing this little festival in the future.
As always, ten spots for bands are open. This stage could be yours for an hour.
FAQ
Which genres do you want?
Basically we had a pretty weird mix last time; indie, stoner rock, ska core, drone, electro and what have you. We are not set in any ‘genre bounds’ – if your band is deemed awesome by our jury, you will play.
How do we apply?
Contact us at festival@waldeck-freakquenz.de with a link to your album or song material.
When will we know?
The jury will convene sometime in March. We will tell you as soon as we know who will get to play.
How do we get there?
You’ll need a car and some directions. If you google Burg Waldeck, you will get wrong hits. The address is Waldeck Weg 1, Dorweiler. But it is sort of in the middle of nowhere.
Is there a reason not to apply?
Absolutely not!
Here are some lectures given @29c3 that I have watched (many more to come!) and found noteworthy – so far.
The keynote “Not my department” by Jacob Applebaum
Security nightmares “Damit Sie auch morgen schlecht von Ihrem Computer träumen” by Frank Rieger and Ron (in German).
Also, Everycook. As one member of the audience put it: “Shut up and take my money!”
More selective bits will follow.
Just a quick reminder: Chaos Computer Club hosts its annual conference, Chaos Communication Congress, for the 29th time this year, from 27th to 30th December for the first time in Hamburg @CCH. Sadly I couldn’t go, but you can stream the talks and lectures in various formats or watch them later online.
Here is the schedule, watch for updates!
Welcome back! You are probably wondering why headbugz has been so quiet for over a month and more. We are now emerging from the self-elected seclusion in the forest. What have we been up to? Well, as usual, we have been preparing for the second Waldeck-Freakquenz-Festival at Burg Waldeck, arriving one week before the date and making the area the most awesome music forest on earth!
This year, we not only had ten amazing bands playing, defying all genre bounds as usual, but various other things you could explore.
Beamer video shows were made by Haegi Freakquenzy. Here are two examples, he made one for my band, Kampfstern, and one for the amazing Hermelin, who rocked hard.
We projected videos to both sides of the stage.
David and Domi built a multichannel yurt (sounds way cooler in German “Mehrkanalzelt” or “Sechskanal-Jurte”), a tent with a surround set-up where you could chill and listen to audio plays or sound installments. David has this project where he sonifies human chromosomes so you can actually listen to human DNA … Trip guaranteed!
The Tetris-Contest was a success! We made prizes for the first to third places, hand-crafted tetris-stones. The lucky winners where overwhelmed with joy. And it was a close call! Does anyone have any pistures of the occasion?
You could take tours to see the old castle, Märchenonkel Fram offered some information and history of the place.
Light Graffiti as usual, you could paint pictures in the night sky with torches, lamps, cell phones, you name it.
The magic forest “Zauberwald” was a small dubstep and drum n bass disco in a remote glade. Friends from Hamburg had prepared many black light art pieces like mushrooms and geometric forms just hanging in the dark forest and glowing with psychedelic colors. We actually got a disco ball up a tree and it just hung in the forest maybe ten meters up. Magical!
And of course you could just space out stargazing anytime.
Thank you all for coming, making music, helping, building things – we had a great time! If you have taken pictures, like Paul and Wing did (thanks again!) please upload them somewhere, there are tons of locations and tricksy neat things I have no pictures of. Words and pictures can’t really convey what it felt like to be there, so I guess you are just going to have to find out next year.
I will take a moment to blog about this now while the festival is still over a month away, before all the craziness starts and I will have no time whatsoever. So, this is our second year of organizing an independent, non-profit festival at Burg Waldeck, which is in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. Last year was the first time we organized it with a bunch of friends and it was a blast.
This year’s date is September 14th-15th, and we have number of cool bands of all varieties.
You can preview the music here.
Preorder handmade tickets here.
But why should you do that? I’ll tell you why. We have everything down there. It may be remote, but this means that we have all the more space to spread out and get crazy. We will do light graffiti when it is dark. We will have a room full of working vintage consoles. We will hold a tetris contest, do you dare enter? We will have lights everywhere and FIRE! Trees! Stone! Stars!
If you write for a magazine or a newspaper, we would be much obliged it you would be so kind and spread the word. Our electronic press kit is abailable here. We are looking forward to transform Waldeck into an environment of sound and lights. Come on down an bring your friends!
We are proud to announce that there will be a second Waldeck-Freakquenz festival this year on 14-15 september 2012. We introduced the festival for the very first time at Burg Waldeck near Dorweiler in Germany, and it was a blast! There are tons of pictures here and here.
Ten spots for bands are open. The stage could be yours.
FAQ
Which genres do you want?
Basically we had a pretty weird mix last time; indie, stoner rock, ska core, drone, electro and what have you. We are not set in any ‘genre bounds’ – if your band is deemed awesome by our jury, you will play.
How do we apply?
Contact us at festival@wimberg.de! Upload or send (mail or snail mail) your album or song material.
When will we know?
The jury will convene sometime in March. We will tell you as soon as we know who will get to play.
How do we get there?
You’ll need a car and some directions. If you google Burg Waldeck, you will get the wrong hits. The address is Waldeck Weg 1, Dorweiler. But it is sort of in the middle of nowhere.
Will there be money?
Yes! Last year, we were able to give all bands gas money. But sadly, at this stage, we won’t be able to pay you anything for your music. Except you’ll get to be at an awesome location with very nice people and food, and you’ll get to sleep in a real comfy bed (or in the forest in moonshine, if you prefer).
Is there a reason not to apply?
Absolutely not!
Waldeck-Freakquenz Festival took as place as planned on September 16th to 17th. First of all I’d like to thank everyone who made this event possible: My fellow organizers and helpers, the bands, the Waldeck team, the Berliner Hütte crew, our sponsors and, last but not least, the guests.
It was a blast and hopefully, a second Waldeck-Freakquenz will be organized next year.
On Friday, Harlekin Dubstation grooved us into the Jam Session. (More band pictures can / will be uploaded here.)
This is what the area looked like… To the left: the stage, to the right: the coffee bus.
We were blessed with a fantastic full moon you could watch while playing on stage. You could buy drinks at the magic coffee bus (image below).
Also, we had a huge fire burning, where people socialized.
As planned, we opened Café Console in the main house. You could play a whole set of vintage games there: We had a C64 and an Amiga 500… Also NES, SNES, Sega Master System, a modded X-Box with 13337 emulated games and a PS1 with light guns. Interestingly, we had a lot of ‘noobs’ wanting to play, as Burg Waldeck is not exactly a place where electronic culture has been cherished over the last decades. But gaming master and super nerd Pantra took care of them all. (You can watch his video blog here!)
Let’s not forget the outdoor screen, where late-night TETRIS battle cries were heard.
As a side quest, light master Wing offered light graffiti. More amazing pictures can be viewed here.
Many bands and visitors took the opportunity to hike down the valley to the castle ruin. We hope that every need was satisfied.
Again, thank you all for coming and contributing yourselves to this amazing event. This entry, of course, is only a short first impression of the festival, for example, there aren’t any proper shots of the stage in full double beamer action and the VJing, but I am expecting new photos every day. Update shortly.
Do you have any remmendations for the next time? What were your impressions of this festival? Please let me know…
Last weekend, the headbugz-team participated in an artsy feast. It is called “Das kleine Fest im großen Park” (The little feast in the big park) and it is so popular with locals and non-locals that tickets are sold only via a lottery, because many people would love to go. A lot of different artists perform every year. Our highlights this year were a human clockwork theatre from Spain and a very large dragon.
You can view some more pics taken by visitors here.
Below are our crappy pictures. The thing with the bikes are “the Sewing Sisters” from the Netherlands. You can “upcycle” your clothes by treading on a holland bikes which powers an old Pfaff sewing machine. I did this for almost 20 minutes and got my shirt a proper upcyclin. Nice idea!
While thiasbugz got upcycled in another way – a makeup artist had her pick on him and made him a dark elf prince with blue hair. Watching was very exciting!
We won’t be around due to work for a few weeks, but after the festivals we will report in length. Have a good one!
headbugz 