By Adok/Hugi
ps aka Psychic Symphony is a demoscener from the area around Porto, Portugal. He has been a member of Tpolm, Calodox and minimalartifact. Currently he is the owner of the netlabel enoughrecords and one of the editors of Pain. He also organized the Inercia demoparties (2001-2006, 2008) and edited the demojournal newsletter and the Sunray diskmag. In real life he has just finished his studies in informatics engineering. His homepage can be found at www.scene.org/ps.
Adok:
You were known for being "Mr. Demojournal". Do you still get mails about Demojournal from time to time?
ps:
Not really, some people talk about it with me at demoparties now and again, mostly when getting nostalgic about the active late 90's PC demoscene, but it's pretty much a ghost in my closet nowdays. Some people still mistake it with DemoNews and Traxweekly and Static Line though, that's always cute to notice, it used to upset me a lot more, nowdays it's just funny and brings back memories
Adok:
You once made the review magazine Sunray. Why was it not continued?
ps:
At the time, lack of support. Then the Internet sites came and kinda made review mags obsolete.
Adok:
What is your opinion on the most recent issues of Zine, Hugi and Pain?
ps:
Zine was a breath of fresh air, got people interested in diskmags again but it has a few strong flaws, mostly regarding covering different geographic and platform regions of the scene.
Hugi is a lot better recently than what it was 3 issues ago, it does its job in covering some important events and interviewing interesting sceners, it's mostly just missing creativity, too stuck in the oldschool formula of doing diskmags in my opinion. Also, the Hugi name is quite scared within the active scene community by lots of different incidents.
I won't refer to Pain since I'm a member of the main editor team and my opinion would obviously be biased.
Adok:
Could you tell us about your master thesis?
ps:
I'm in the process of finishing writing it. The subject of the thesis is about meta heuristic optimizer algorithms applied to the expedite modelling of urban environments. It sounds quite technologically overly complicated when explained but here goes: I developed a new hybrid meta heuristic algorithm inspired in several implementations of simulated annealing, harmonic search and real value genetic algorithms, and applied it to an expeditious modelling system based on l-systems adapted for urban modelling that I had been previously working on for a few months, so now we can estimate some values and fine-tune some modelling production rules in a more elegant, automatic way.
Adok:
Where does your interest in artificial intelligence come from?
ps:
"Ghost in the Shell", ever since I saw that movie I became obsessed with the neurological comprehension, definition of humanity, bionics, artificial life, brain computer interfaces, flock dynamics, optimizing simulation procedures, Markov chains and such stuff; the more I looked into it the more I got hooked. Learning more about AI was the whole point for me to change to informatics engineering (I got sick of civil engineering), I still have hopes one day being able to let my consciousness live forever in the digital realm.
Adok:
How are A.I. and the demoscene related?
ps:
They're not.
I had a few nice conversations about the subject with some sceners before though: I remember quite a few discussions with brothomStates about evolutionary programming, Knos for example had a fetish on neural networks, and Memon was doing some AI r&d for his game company, I believe. But like most creative people with daily jobs, despite their interest for the subject they don't have time to do much practical audiovisual applications, which is a shame really, there are so many audiovisual applications for AI stuff. Even done in the most basic level it can bring a whole new dimension to some algorithms; if you look at the art/design world there are myriads of self-taught coders applying AI to get some pseudo-conceptual shit out to get them more attention. But as always in the demoscene, scene coders care more about the framerate and the in-your-face 3d with overlays crap. Few exceptions aside.
Adok:
You've recently also successfully participated in some graphics competitions. Since when have you been drawing?
ps:
Couple years now, I was always occasionally doodling some stuff now and again when bored, but was nothing more than class notebook corner fillers, trying to draw realistic stuff would give me the butterflies in my stomach, so I never quite took it on seriously. I just grew more casual into the whole sketching affair after breaking up with an ex of mine who was much into drawing, hanging out with people who draw when they're bored can get really motivating, even if you suck at it you still get the spirit to just do something, plus working with pen and paper was a nice hobby to rest the eyes from staring at the computer monitor all day every day, and you can listen to music while doing it, so it's great! I just have to keep it abstract enough not to be too judgmental with myself over not being realistic enough and keep trying out different techniques and incorporating them into my own style.. It's fun in a way that coding, writing or making sound will never be.
Adok:
You are the owner of the netlabel enoughrecords. What musicians have released songs in this label? Is it Portuguese-only?
ps:
I can't really tell you any names without forgetting another handful that deserve to be mentioned, there are so many of them, we have 176 releases at the moment, probably more by the time you read this, and most of them are one time releasers. If we like the release we'll put it out, we don't care what style of music it is or if you already have a name or not, we just focus on promoting music we like and projects that release their music for free. We're not Portuguese only, the ratio should be somewhere around 70-30, more foreigner releases than Portuguese.
Adok:
Enoughrecords has also made some gigs in Porto. Was live music played at these gigs? How difficult is it to play music composed using computers on live instruments?
ps:
Yes, we organized a few gigs and even a 3-day festival. Mostly dedicated to dark ambient, noise and experimental electronic music with liveacts from different projects. The difficulty of the liveact depends a lot on how you set up your performance; it can get as easy as pressing play on the laptop and project some DVD or grow into bringing in synthesizers and drum kits to make it look more active. It depends a lot on the project and how it's set up.
Adok:
Was minimalartifact a label for your solo productions or was it a real group? What other people belonged to it?
ps:
It was a group but I was the sole dictator. Basically whoever helped me get a demo finished was part of the group and no one else would make demos under minimalartifact label without my interaction. So there were quite a few people involved but they mostly just put up with my complaining and provided me with some material when I asked them.
Adok:
I watched some minimalartifact productions and enjoyed them! Do I belong to a minority?
ps:
Yes, you were a minority. Most sceners didn't get the concept of minimalartifact, partly it was my fault. The idea behind minimalartifact also englobed some sort of social experiment, where not revealing the purpose was part of the analysis.
But the concept in itself was quite simple: make demos worth watching.
I had 3 constraints: had to be long, had to have a long and "boring" soundtrack, had to have one sole and "boring" effect. The idea was to create contemplative demos, where a normal person wouldn't be able to follow the progression without getting bored and there is no actual explicit conceptual background and/or deep meaningful story about it. It's just a demo going nowhere very slowly. It can be cool to watch. Some sceners thought of it a mockery, others liked it for what it was.
Adok:
What's your relation to minimalanimal?
ps:
They were the inspiration for minimalartifact, they were doing joke demos about the "artyfaggot" scene movement by creating very long and boring, purposedly mockingly anti-conceptual productions. I thought there was plenty of room for good demos under the long and boring non-conceptual demomaking realm, so I set to prove it.
Adok:
How much work was it to organize the Inercia demoparties?
ps:
It depends, on the 2006 one I invested quite a few weeks' full day schedule into it. Others on the organizing team invested a lot more. On the previous ones, some of them, we invested more, others we invested less, it always depends how secure you already have your location and bigscreen and sponsors for the prizes.
Adok:
Why was there no Inercia demoparty in 2007?
ps:
In 2006 most of the organizing team invested too much to make a greater event possible, the demosceners' attendance didn't reflect the efforts, plus we got screwed over in many ways by our partners in this larger endeavour. So we just decided it wasn't worth it anymore, it's less bothersome for the inactive sceners in the orga team to stay home and watch demos with some friends, it's less expensive for the active sceners in the orga team to travel abroad for a better demoparty without the stress of having to organize the event, plus half the attendants of the event were organizers despite all the outreach and publicity efforts, so we just concluded Portugal ain't up for an active scene with a yearly demoparty, it just wasn't worth the effort anymore. We decided to just call it quits.
I'm thinking of doing a downsized inerciademoparty2008 though, just for kicks, active demoscene and gamedev Portuguese people only.
Adok:
Now that inerciademoparty2008 is over, what was it like?
ps:
Initially depressive, then hectic and fun.
ps & Adok