EMF 2026
EMF was fucking incredible. the collision of algorave and demoscene we got in trash compactor, going nuts dancing to all the amazing djs at nullsector, the planetarium dome demo compo and the shader dome, seeing all these crazy hackers running around with their dorky projects, the fact that about 50% of the population were hot trans girls lol, all the fucking about with the microcontroller badges, the antics that glastonledburyshire-on-severn were pulling, finding out about the wild stuff the biohackers are putting in their bodies, nightshade showing off its insane tetris skillz, meeting synth artist laurie black, the incredibly energetic australian guy in fetish gear running 'the dark room' interactive comedy thing...
and then of course there was shaderland!! after a lot of last minute effort to fix the remaining bugs, the demo got to show at emf. we saw a bunch of people play it, some instantly clicking, some struggling, some really taking the time to pick up what it's saying. joe at the arcade tent was incredibly accommodating in updating builds and such, and took a really enthusiastic interest in the game.
the demo will be live on steam soon, and a series of devlogs (text/video tbd) explaining how it's made. really hoping it can help bridge these worlds of trans shit and graphics shit and get people into this ridiculous art form we think is so cool.
got two years to hack together a much crazier outfit with latex and LEDs and shit. but goddamn. we clearly missed our calling in being a hacker all this time x3 you can just be a cyberpunk creature if you want to.
and after all the fallout of losing nora memdmp (who came along in blåhaj form), it's really good to be reminded of what this subculture is even for in the first place. it's so good to see people using the wizard arts to make such idiosyncratic, personal shit. seeing three trans girls get up and livecode a wild crow sample-based strudel set along with distorted video of them wrestling in a livecoding tool one of them wrote? that's what it's all about
hopefully gonna be able to make it out to Congress at the end of the year. before then, gotta finish some things pretty urgently for Assembly in Helsinki and Evoke in Köln. so watch this space ;p
