“LETS MEET” - New Media Underground Festival, London

Wednesday 29th November 2000. It's the last day of the New Media Underground Festival and I've been struggling to pin down exactly what happened tonight. The best I can describe it as is 'Dreamless Live'.

DECEMBER 2000, by John Dalziel We had threads, discussions, free association of ideas, dead ends, excitement, boredom, angst and flames. The only difference was that you could put a face to a post.

The situation was very intimate: The cafe of the Istitute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall in London.

The event kicked off at 2PM with Derek MC-ing a freeform 'pass-the-mic' discussion on everything from web censorship to racism within the industry.

Like the board itself, the turn out covered the extremes of the web community. Students from London College of Printing rubbed shoulders with industry veterans and luminaries - all of whom were dreamless posters and lurkers.

A lot of the time was spent discussing the growing pains of Dreamless with many of the opinion that it hasn't really found its voice yet.


The intimate tone got a little rowdier as the room filled out and by the time Flash Forward closed its doors it looked like the luminaries had taken over the asylum. At one point I counted at least nine speakers from FF in the room. This made for some very surreal exchanges. One sound question was raised by Martin Fasani. It was chewed over by Manuel Clement and Amit Pitaru before being picked up Joshua Davis and then definitively answered by Joel Baumann. The important point though is that all of these people, speakers and students alike, were here of their own volition. This was an event formed and driven by a community spirit.

I'll leave you with some of the more memorable quotes from the evening.

There are a lot of fusions going on. Now we start to inspire each other
Eduardo (Wholo)

At the moment it is a little pretencous to think of Flash as an artform
Amit Pitaru

I think that TV babysits our children
Joshua Davis

On the last day we also taped a short interview with Vitaly Leokumovich in which he explains how this unique event came about.


FM: It really was incredible how fast all this came together. Especially as it was put together by people from different countires at such short notice.
VL: Yeah, it's all about community. I thought the prices for Flash Forward were really high and I just realised that many people were going to come to the city but couldn't afford to go. So I decided all of a sudden that maybe we should meet in a pub. Then I think we should do something more than that.

I decided that I really wanted to support this idea so I created a couple of banners and thought lets start with this.

I was in New York, Eduardo in Rotterdam, Hassan in London and Derek also. Derek helped us to find the Lux and Friends of Ed offered to sponsor the event to help us out.

FM: Are all these people on dreamless? Is that where it all came about?
VL: Yes. Everybody was there and everybody was like, "lets meet". It's like a community thing - lets get together and make it happen.

FM: It felt very spontaneous on Sunday.
VL: We didn't really organise. We arrived there and just met each other. We didn't even know how we looked . We didn't really prepare a schedule we just walked around and asked: "Do you wanna do a presentation?" , "Do you want to use Mac or PC?" and people said "yeah, yeah, I'll do it". So many people arrived, it was so exciting.

FM: One of the things I found exciting was that everbody posted to dreamless and you knew all the handles but you didn't really know what they looked like.
VL: Yeah, the next time I go to dreamless I'll know who I'm talking to!

FM: I was going to bring up the site. It was amazing how fast you built it.
VL: It was three days. Me and my partner, Spectre. He just created some 3D animation and I did the backend and technical bits. Plus I was working at EgoMedia so I was working full time there then staying on after, to work on the site.

I only got a couple of hours sleep each night. After I finished I realise there are so many bugs so I put out an advert to bug test it.

FM: Did you post that on dreamless?
VL: Yeah.

FM: Probably the best beta testers in the world!
VL: Yeah, they were like: "you have this, you have that".

FM: It's been a big success
VL: For us this is just the beginning. We want to use this domain so that people all round the world can create similar events.

Have you met the guys from cHmAn?


FM: Yeah we met them. They're really nice guys.
VL: They just walked up and said: "Do you know, we had the same idea. We want to do something similar in France then we realised you guys are already doing it. If you need help then let us know."

We want to organise low cost events for the design community. At NMUF we managed free entry, free T-shirt. Beer was very cheap. Everybody had a good time. Everybody was happy. That was the idea behind all this.

I attended Flash Forward in New York and San Fransisco and all the big corporations were there but I didn't feel the excitement that I felt on Sunday; the same energy.

People came from France, Germany, Belgium, the US, a lot from the UK.

FM: A lot of the speakers from Flash Forward were in the audience.
VL: Yeah. If you wanted to see them, they were there.

FM: Is there anyone you'd like to thank?
VL: A big credit to Eduardo for starting it all off. I'd also like to say thanks to Derek. I'd also like to say Friends of Ed. So many people were part of it.

FM: It was very community spirited
VL: Exactly. That was very important. I just feel that way; like we have some power, we are the leaders.

FM: A groundswell?
VL: Definitely. A lot of energy.

FM: Thanks Vitaly.
VL: No problem.

 

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