ars electronica 2001 -

ARS ELECTRONICA 2001 - electrolobby diary.
[by simon 'h0l' carless - h0l@mono211.com - final update 03/03/02 - contact me with feedback, requests, etc..]

introduction
this website was set up to document the preparations, trip, and experiences of Simon 'h0l' Carless at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, held from 1st-6th September, 2001.

what?
Ars Electronica was a massive, multi-disciplinary multimedia arts festival held annually in Austria, and this year's theme is 'Takeover - Who's Doing The Art Of Tomorrow?'. I presented two subjects for exhibition in the Electrolobby section:

Firstly, I exhibited material on the showfloor and spoke informally on the subject "From Bedroom Programmers to Media Gods", and in it I charted the history of the 'demo-scene', from 'oldskool crack-intros to amazing multimedia presentations. I then showed how the quirks, limitations, and innovations of that unique artform (the demo!) have led to those aforementioned 'bedroom programmers' going on to be leading lights in many forms of media, from flash animation, through films, to (_especially_) videogames.

Secondly, I spoke + exhibited on the subject - "Boom Boom Tschak: The Art And Innovation of Music-Based Videogames". This was about how music is playing an integral part in the _gameplay_ of many videogames now, and I showed the history and innovations of music-based games, and most of all, how these titles innovate and dazzle, through use of custom controllers and through innovative graphics and gameplay. Some of the titles I showed included the classic titles from Japanese developer Nana On-Sha, including "Parappa The Rapper and "Vib Ribbon", plus many of the titles in the groundbreaking Konami 'Bemani' series. And lots more obscure and geekyfun stuff besides :)

who?
I'm Simon 'h0l' Carless. I'm a videogame designer based in the USA nowadays, but was involved in the Amiga and PC 'demo-scene' for over 10 years, under the name Hollywood, as a musician in groups like Jetset/Skid Row, Axis, and Valhalla, operating outta my home country of England. Also, I was the founder of Mono (nowadays Monotonik+friends), the .MOD and now .MP3 net.music.label that was featured at Electrolobby in 2000, tho I wasn't able to make it then due to work commitments.

My career in videogames started in the UK, working as part of Simis/Eidos Interactive and subsequently Kuju Entertainment, where I designed the post-pub knockabout cultiness (i wish!) of "Tank Racer" on the Sony Playstation, and then helped create "Looney Tunes Racing", also for Playstation (Chuck Jones, aww) at Infogrames USA in San Jose, California. We've recently spun off a start-up who are working on various next-gen console products.

I also wrote game-related columns/articles and am part of the Editorial Advisory Board for Gamasutra.com, the online component of Game Developer Magazine, and I was part of the Prix Ars Electronica nominating committee in the fields of net.games and net.music for 2001 (and am again for 2002!) And I have lots of fun maintaining all the pages on mono211.com, including this one!

why?
Because this page provides links to additional research/information about my mini-lectures, plus some fun blog-style evolving info about my experiences leading up to and at Ars Electronica, with neato pictures and all kinds of craziness. look, Mom, i'm on the world wide web!

details?
If you'd like to see the informal interview proposals I gave the Electrolobby guys (the kind of questions they asked me in the symposiums and the kind of material I showed), then click here.

--

pictures?
Now i've returned, here's a selection of the most interesting, weird, amusing, unamusing, and just generally 'relevant' digicam photos I took whilst I was at Ars Electronica. Uhh, enjoy?


[day 1] - Frankfurt airport is pretty scary, hence this underground walkway looking like weirdo infinite future robotcontrolled neoncrap..	[day 2] - massive banks of speakers suspended from several cranes on the banks of the Danube for the Vladislav Delay + Luomo concerts, nice.	[day 3] - the Electrolobby area itself, where I hung out + showed stuff, lots of PCs and televisions projecting neatstuff - only downside, crazy overconceptualised chairs.

[day 3] - the verycool micromusic.net concert at the opening of the Electrolobby, lots of GB (pictured!) and C64-style bleep goodness. [day 4] - this exhibit says 'if you don't think this is art, call..', and when you call a number, a paintgun automatically adds a splat to the billboard. Very droll. [day 4] - Linz town center, very, uhh, Austrian, isn't it?

[day 4] - sunset over the Danube in the center of Linz is really pretty. [day 4] - also on the banks of the Danube, neat dusk-illuminated statue. [day 4] - no real comment needed, apparently the featured guy is 'Staats Meister 2001'. The next Arnie?

[day 4] - an Austrian tram, as illuminated by the h0l.noflash skool of photography. [day 5] - the ORF (Austrian national broadcasting) TV station party for the Prix Ars Electronica awards. Note idiot in white suit with massive 70s lapels :) [day 5] - Lesser of Tigerbeat 6 + Matador fame changes all the Internet-company-sponsored terminals at the ORF party to unquittable websites. Bad Lesser :P

[day 5] - also at ORF, as blogged, I change a machine to play 'Zak McCracken' DOS version in Italian (by mistake) and then spend the next hour trying to play through it. Eediot! [day 6] - the permanent Ars Electronica Center gallery in Linz rocks, here's something making cityscapes from tiny blocks robotically. [day 6] - this machine, also snapped by Subi last year, plants little seeds in Net or computer-specified places and then lets them grow :)

[day 6] - really neat exhibit which allows you to stand in front of a screen with ASCII characters falling slowly down and 'catch' them with your filmed image. [day 6] - best Blue Screen Of Death _ever_, as promised, this on a tabletennis table (!?!) which is meant to have projected ripples on it where you hit the pingpong ball. [day 6] - spooky big church from a Hitchcockian angle - 'Vertigo', anyone?

[day 6] - well, you see, heh.. it's.. got the word 'WANK' in it. 'WANK'! Hahahaha! Classic. [day 6] - reallyweird gothic inscription on the outside of a Linz church, complete with lots of skulls - surely that can't be good? [day 6] - the specially constructed pyramid-shaped stage down by the docks/container terminal which Senor Coconut played at.

[day 6] - Senor Coconut's 8-piece band rocking the roof (ok, point!) off the mutha with their samba versions of Kraftwerk! [day 6] - the inestimable Meester Coconut and friends from another, even more red angle. Perhaps even the highlight of the trip, they totallyruled. [day 7] - broken when we tried it, the 'Brainball' machine allows you to control a metal ball on a magnet with brainwaves - the more relaxed you are, the better you do!

[day 7] - crazybrilliant Japanese art project at OK-Center which reminded of 'Vib Ribbon', shake different kid toy instruments to move 'rakugaki'-style 3D projected images. [day 7] - the _GREAT_ Blechtum from Blechdom kicking it live at the Posthof with darn crunchynice beats, plus much singing about BBQs and good/bad music. Rocked. [day 8] - time to go, courtesy of Lauda Air, vroom. Thanks again to Bruno+Tina @ Electrolobby and everyone involved, you ppl rock my world, the whole thing was a blast.

--

blog?

[03/03/02 - 10.19pm PST]
A final, swift update to tie up some loose ends, mainly fixing the tenses on the page! I'm on the nominating committee for the Prix Ars Electronica again this year (2002!), but I won't be going to the festival this time round. Apologies that more detailed write-ups for the lectures never eventuated - I started on them, but there's just not enough hours in the day :( Nonetheless, I hope you dug the page.

[08/09/01 - 6.42pm PST]
Finally back, and nursing just a leetle jetlag, I uploaded and commented all the pictures I couldn't get online before. Hope you enjoy them and it doesn't make the page _too_ unmanageable to load. I'm going to finish my longer write-up of the music-game stuff I talked about whenever I have some spare time, so look out for that appearing here eventually. Otherwise, it only remains for me to comment on the rest of the trip. First off, the Blectum from Blechdom concert was _GREAT_, they're complete stars, and Kid606's Missy Elliott remix after fairly blew my head off, totallyamazing set until he started getting a tad too abstract and noiseweapon-y for my liking. Secondly, the Electrolobby GameJam presentation went great, esp. in the very short time everyone had - I applaud all the related Flash-toting companies, look for the results on the Electrolobby or Vectorlounge sites now/soon.

[06/09/01 - 11.54am Austrian time.]
Final update from Austria, since we´re off to the ORF TV studios in a while for the GameJam people to present their cool Flash games that they did at the festival. Kerb´s involves a Sumo Squid and lots of ´Rampage´-style building destruction, Chman´s has Bambi-style deer with their heads falling off, as knocked up by the character designer on Sonic Team´s "Shaka Tamborine", plus Sulake´s stuff has ´Rayman´-style floating body parts with reallycool physics on them. In other words, frickin´ amazing. I think these guys are the cream of Flash game designers, honestly. Oh, and last night, Senor Coconut playing live as an 8-piece in a specially constructed pyramid stage, oh. my. god. Since i´m a fan of Atom Heart/Meester Coconut already, I was in heaven, or somewhere beyond that. Thanks again to the Electrolobby staff (Bruno, Tina, everyone!) and the Ars Electronica massif - this has been great!

[05/09/01 - 5.17pm Austrian time.]
Things are still rumbling on good, the Luomo concert (outdoors) was awesome, massive speakers booming that crazylushhouse all over the shop. Also saw the 2nd half of Ryoji Ikeda´s performance art piece - hm, a little conceptual for me, perhaps, and a little too much interpretative dance for my liking. Started writing up a version of the ´Boom Boom Tschak´ lecture in text form, since I made much more detailed notes that I never got a chance to get into. Look for it.. eventually. Shout-outs to all the really nice Electrolobby residents I´ve met here, esp. Nate @ everything2.com, Wendy @ openlaw.org, the Brighton massif (hah!) @ kerb.co.uk, and the other verycoolpeeps such as sulake labs, k10k (stopmotion crazies!), chman and so on..

[04/09/01 - 4.51pm Austrian time.]
The Electrolobby is still in full swing, and the Prix Ars reception at ORF (Austrian national TV) last night was superswank. Congrats to Team Chman (of Banja fame) for winning one of the Golden Nica awards at the prize ceremony. We got to be slightly subversive, teaming up with the currently Bjork-touring Lesser of the Tigerbeat6 massif (ya know, Kid606, Blectums..) to change all the net.terminals at the event from the sponsor to more interesting things, such as the Lesser-related 2inches.com (click at yr peril!), C64 emulators, and, uhh, "Zak McCracken And The Alien Mindbenders". In Italian. Heehee. Luomo (Vladislav Delay´s clickhouse pseudonym?) is playing some crazy multi-suspended speaker set tonight, so hopefully will catch it. More pictures have been taken, including the best bluescreenofdeath EVER, but will have to wait til I get back to the US.

[03/09/01 - 8.16pm Austrian time.]
Alright, so I managed to do my two main presentations, both upstairs in the lecturehall and down here in Electrolobby, and it all went really well. Camera pictures are sadly delayed til i get back, due to Olympus _SUCKING_ (no online drivers for my camera at all? what a joke!) and Kerb´s flashcard reader (the alternative) apparently turning (through no fault of their own except possible water immolation) into a ´bluescreen enabler´ device instead. Soo.. 3 strikes, I´m out. Maybe I can just describe all the pics to you? Yoiks. Anyhow, off to the Prix Ars Electronica awards now, hope "Phantasy Star Online" wins!

[01/09/01 - 5.52pm Austrian time.]
Here I am at Electrolobby, both alive and relatively jetlag free, thanks to the logical measure of, uhh, sleeping on the plane. Managed to get everything set up and it all works very well except the poor old Amiga, which I´m emulating and .mpg-ing now anyhow (we _almost_ had it, but were missing one of the Workbench discs with CrossDOS on it!) Linz is a really rather pretty Austrian town, we´re right on the banks of the Danube here (no attempt made as of yet to find out whether it´s blue or just murky, it´s been raining a lot here, thus the Vladislav Delay outside start-event was sadly cancelled because of storms blowing over the big screen or similar - UPDATE - actually, it wasn´t cancelled, something else which needed the screen was, i just got confused - but i get to catch Luomo, his other pseudonym instead, which is as good!) Started taking pictures, too, will try to upload them if i can get my camera connected. The highlight of Electrolobby is lots of Flash teams like Habbohotel, Kerb, Chman doing a game in real-time at the Festival, so when they´re all done, i´ll link to them, they should rock! Otherwise, no, Mom, I didn´t get economy-class syndrome, yes, Subi, I´ll get on IRC soon, licks to McButtah. Moresoon!

[29/08/01 - 10.26pm PST]
At the last minute, I managed to find and burn a bunch of console (Playstation and Dreamcast) demos, which are particularly interesting because it's sorta subverting the concept that you can only run what Sony or Sega want you to. Only a few are of decent quality, but the ones which are seem rather impressive, especially the ones by Haujobb - lots of oldskool Amiga sceners have a hand in those, which can only be good imho. And everything seems to fit in my suitcase, which is even better :P Flying out (San Francisco to Frankfurt, and onto Linz) tomorrow, should be able to update again on Saturday from Electrolobby itself. Bon voyage to, uh, myself.. :)

[26/08/01 - 7.11pm PST]
Attempted a redesign of this page, but it didn't work out - having everything (apart from the interview proposals) on one page works better for now. Tho Lord knows what happens when I start adding lots of digicam pictures :P Oh, I bought "MTV Music Generator 2" for PS2, which is a great music composition program software toy (slightly different from a 'music game', I guess, there's no pass/fail, just abstract composition - I might show the first one for Playstation at Electrolobby, since I'm taking a modded PSX.) Oh, and I'm eagerly expecting my "Samba De Amigo" stuffed toy monkey and "Parappa The Rapper" noise-activated Parappa with, uhm, shaking maracas, ordered from the lovely import gaming guys (highly recommended if you're in the US!) at National Console Support. Not actually handy, just geeky. Ohdear. Which reminds me, "Parappa The Rapper 2" for Playstation 2 comes out in Japan whilst I'm in Austria for Ars Electronica - shame I couldn't show it to everyone, since it's _bound_ to rock. More of Chop Chop Master Onion is never a bad thing. Whee.. one more update before I fly out?

[19/08/01 - 8.46pm PST]
Things eez good. My work visa transfer sorted itself out in time too, so no hassles with customs, and I've just done some final preparations in terms of what I want to show at the Sunday and Monday sessions. In fact, I thought there's no harm in putting up the document I sent to the Electrolobby organisers, so if you want to see what I'll be talking about and showing in those slots, click here - it's an informal document, obviously, but also an informative one, hopefully! I also have a notebook full of more detailed thoughts and infos - I may get to typing these up at some point during Ars Electronica and putting them online, if I have any spare time! Otherwise, I managed to get "Guitar Freaks" working by using my Playstation VCD player's Action Replay to defeat the mod-chip protection which stops it running even when you have an original purchased disc from a different region, yay! So axe heroes are go. Incidentally, I'm looking forward to the rest of Ars Electronica very much (Vladislav Delay! Senor Coconut! the guys who did that Eastenders catapult game!) - i'll try to take some pictures and pass them along to you lovely chaps. Over and out.. more info coming as flight date to Austria rapidly approaches!

[12/08/01 - 5.57pm PST]
Sorting out the Amiga stuff - found some good .mpgs of a bunch of classic demos, yaay. Tried WINUae (Amiga emulator on PC) to see if it had improved, but only marginally as far as demos go, I'm afraid - the Amiga is such a custom beast that emulating it still seems problematic, especially for titles such as demos which are using all kinds of crazy blitter tricks :) But everything else is going good - I know what I'm going to say, more or less, and in what order. FYI, the times I'm speaking onstage will be at the Electrolobby instant panels (definitely on Monday, maybe on Tuesday too!), and also maybe at the Ars Electronica Symposium thing on Sunday. It'll be informal interview stylee with me chatting to the host, which is good, cos they'll guide me in the right direction - i'll get my points across without having to directly address the audience and burble on about infinite bobs in an eyes-glaze-over-with-boredom merengue. Oh, and you can catch me on the Electrolobby showfloor most of the time, obviously. :P

[06/08/01 - 11.43pm PST]
So, I'm wondering whether showing the Spice Girls video-game (in relation to the music-game mini-lecture!) at Electrolobby will either get me a rapt audience, delighted at my post-modern tongue-in-cheek chic, or everyone laughing and deserting me to go down the pub (bierkeller, what have you..) Actually, it's got pretty cute graphics, and some interesting ideas, but really doesn't play too well as a music-game, so i'll bring it, but i'll only show it in case of emergency, since there's only a certain amount of Scary, Baby, and Sporty forward-thinking delegates will be able to take ;) But I have been looking at the music games in more detail, asking around - found out there was a breakdancing game on the Commodore 64 in 1986 which isn't a million miles away from the "Dance Dance Revolution" and "Parappa" titles of today! More proof that it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it - if you can update old styles and genres with new gameplay and graphical innovations, you're sorted. Still seems to me that "Parappa The Rapper", the first of the new-skool music games, got it amazingly right first time, so much so that it's got more gameplay innovations and crystallisations than most of the rest of the music games combined. But maybe that's my general worshipping of NaNa On-Sha (mm, "Vib Ribbon") coming to the fore. In any case, play "Parappa" alongside other music games on the showfloor at Electrolobby and see if you agree with me.

[29/07/01 - 11.35pm PST]
Finished looking at all the PC demos I'd ever want to see in my life-time (have decided to only show the very 'best' of those as opposed to the most oldskool, for the greatest part - nostalgic PC demos just aren't as well designed or as interesting as nostalgic Amiga or C64 demos. But boy, there's some good PC demos I hadn't seen!) Oh, and have been talking to Alex Evans/Statix, who's a demo-scener who went on to work on "Black And White" at Lionhead, about showing the club visuals system he's designed based off demo routines - so we should get an exclusive (outside crazed clubnights!) look at that for Ars Electronica too, whee. And I have all the music-game stuff I need, with the exception of those damn maracas and maybe some issues with "Guitar Freaks" and PSX regional lock-outs. But, basically there with regard to source-stuff, phew. Next up, Amiga demos (on both video as a backup, and on A500 floppies - time to get the Amiga outta the closet!)

[23/07/01 - 11.28pm PST]
Seems like everything is confirmed for me to do the music-based game mini-lecture as well, which is great news - I'm buying, borrowing, and begging all the games and peripherals I need right now, and I'm pretty excited about it. The wonderful Electrolobby guys have sorted out a 60hz TV and stepdown transformers, so that's most of the technical issues out of the way. Gives me a great excuse to buy those "Samba De Amigo" maracas, too :) And I've been checking out some more PC demos, there's some really smart ones I hadn't seen before from Sunflower and Popsy Team that I hope to show - hope people dig them. Oh, and the Electrolobby guys can get me an A500 for the festival at least, which is really good to show the old, classic OCS demos - maybe we'll find an A1200 to see AGA demos too, but it's not the most vital thing in the world ever. More soon!

[19/07/01 - 1.03pm PST]
Over the last coupla days, I've been doing some research on Commodore 64 demos (the grandaddies of them all!), and have been looking out some of the best recent ones to show off the rather spectacular, or exceedingly retro-cool stuff you can do on a computer with 64k of memory! I'm also looking out demos which feature specific people who've taken their demo experience and gone on to be prominent in videogames, of course. I adore demos as an artform, no matter what format they're on :) There's also some very decent C64 emulators on PC for showing the demos off at Ars Electronica, which is great. I think Amiga emulators are still a little more rudimentary (i'm still hoping to bring/borrow an actual Amiga), but I can run Amiga demos as videos in .mpg if necessary. Oh, and finally, I _have_ decided, since this Ars Electronica is meant to be all about games, and I design the darn things, I shouldn't _just_ talk about demos. So I'm planning to do the other half of my discussion/lecturing about music-based videogames, their history, and _lots_ of examples of them. So now I need to work out the logistics of bringing a Playstation and Dreamcast across to Austria (stepdown converters, 60hz TVs, etc..). Here's some of the games I will hopefully be showing off and talking about: Loom, Sim Tunes (PC), Parappa The Rapper, Um Jammer Lammy, Vib Ribbon, Beatmania + multiple append discs, Guitar Freaks, Dance Dance Revolution + multiple append discs (Playstation), Space Channel 5, Samba De Amigo (Dreamcast), plus moremoremore! Ok, more soon. :)

[15/07/01 - 11.37pm PST]
The very start of the page, and about 6 weeks to go til the festival starts. I'm still in the process of collecting demos and other interesting content for Ars Electronica, and also in the midst of trying to sort out what hardware we should have there. As well as the standard PC, it'd be very nice to have an actual Amiga running demos (plus possibly Red Sector Demo-Maker, so people could try to make their own!), but Amigas are a little difficult to find if you're a normal tech guy nowadays, so I'm currently asking some Austrian acquaintances if I can borrow one. If not, I just bought one over here in the States from a co-worker, so I might be able to sort out all the voltage problems and bring it over (my original A1200 is in my parents attic in the UK, and I'm not going there first, soo.. there it stays!). Have thought briefly about doing similar with a Commodore 64, but they're pretty cranky and I'm not an expert in them, so I'll probably end up running an emulator to show lotsa cool C64 stuff. Oh, and I'm still toying with the concept of doing a little mini-feature, completely unrelated, on my personal obsession, music-based videogames, but lots of custom controllers to carry around (i'm not carrying a full-size Intellivision 4-octave keyboard across the Atlantic!), so i'll have to improvise or pick the cool+smaller items, I guess ;)

--

demo links?
alt.sys.amiga.demos FAQ - written by me back in 1995-6. a good starter (tho a bit out of date!)
scene.org - the best file repository, plus news+info about PC demos.
cornea - a great site with the subjective (and very well-reviewed!) 'best' PC demos, year-by-year.
orange juice - latest PC demo news.
ccs64 - one of the best C64 emulators on the PC.
c64.ch - an excellent source for Commodore 64 demos.

music-game related links?
GDC Masaya Matsuura lecture report - my report for Gamasutra on the GDC lecture from the "Parappa" creator.
DDR Freak - DDR Freak - cool "Dance Dance Revolution" fanpage!.


[day 3] - the verycool micromusic.net concert at the opening of the Electrolobby, lots of GB (pictured!) and C64-style bleep goodness.	[day 4] - this exhibit says 'if you don't think this is art, call..', and when you call a number, a paintgun automatically adds a splat to the billboard. Very droll.	[day 4] - Linz town center, very, uhh, Austrian, isn't it?


[day 4] - sunset over the Danube in the center of Linz is really pretty.	[day 4] - also on the banks of the Danube, neat dusk-illuminated statue.	[day 4] - no real comment needed, apparently the featured guy is 'Staats Meister 2001'. The next Arnie?


[day 4] - an Austrian tram, as illuminated by the h0l.noflash skool of photography.	[day 5] - the ORF (Austrian national broadcasting) TV station party for the Prix Ars Electronica awards. Note idiot in white suit with massive 70s lapels :)	[day 5] - Lesser of Tigerbeat 6 + Matador fame changes all the Internet-company-sponsored terminals at the ORF party to unquittable websites. Bad Lesser :P


[day 5] - also at ORF, as blogged, I change a machine to play 'Zak McCracken' DOS version in Italian (by mistake) and then spend the next hour trying to play through it. Eediot!	[day 6] - the permanent Ars Electronica Center gallery in Linz rocks, here's something making cityscapes from tiny blocks robotically.	[day 6] - this machine, also snapped by Subi last year, plants little seeds in Net or computer-specified places and then lets them grow :)


[day 6] - really neat exhibit which allows you to stand in front of a screen with ASCII characters falling slowly down and 'catch' them with your filmed image.	[day 6] - best Blue Screen Of Death _ever_, as promised, this on a tabletennis table (!?!) which is meant to have projected ripples on it where you hit the pingpong ball.	[day 6] - spooky big church from a Hitchcockian angle - 'Vertigo', anyone?


[day 6] - well, you see, heh.. it's.. got the word 'WANK' in it. 'WANK'! Hahahaha! Classic.	[day 6] - reallyweird gothic inscription on the outside of a Linz church, complete with lots of skulls - surely that can't be good?	[day 6] - the specially constructed pyramid-shaped stage down by the docks/container terminal which Senor Coconut played at.


[day 6] - Senor Coconut's 8-piece band rocking the roof (ok, point!) off the mutha with their samba versions of Kraftwerk!	[day 6] - the inestimable Meester Coconut and friends from another, even more red angle. Perhaps even the highlight of the trip, they totallyruled.	[day 7] - broken when we tried it, the 'Brainball' machine allows you to control a metal ball on a magnet with brainwaves - the more relaxed you are, the better you do!


[day 7] - crazybrilliant Japanese art project at OK-Center which reminded of 'Vib Ribbon', shake different kid toy instruments to move 'rakugaki'-style 3D projected images.	[day 7] - the _GREAT_ Blechtum from Blechdom kicking it live at the Posthof with darn crunchynice beats, plus much singing about BBQs and good/bad music. Rocked.	[day 8] - time to go, courtesy of Lauda Air, vroom. Thanks again to Bruno+Tina @ Electrolobby and everyone involved, you ppl rock my world, the whole thing was a blast.