Now what!!

Wow the mega stress is over. Now is the time of reflecting back on how it all was. On June the 6th we had a pre run on the event for a special reason. Arthouse, in Dublin Ireland had a festival and we took a little part in it. Around 20:00 we where sound testing and preparing for the formal pre run. We had invited the Minister of Culture and Education, all our sponsors and other people that had been kind to us and the show was to start at 21:00. There was never time to run everything together before the formal pre run. Our Craters band was sound testing and all of a sudden we heard a sax flowing through the air. It was playing so perfectly in tune with the band it took us a few moments to realize that the sax sounds where coming from the computer by a live person in Ireland. I couldn't understand it until I saw the guy on the computer. So they where watching us - we them and we could have a little chat thought the dial up connection. When this happened few of us got this incredible feeling like we are making history here in Iceland. It's a shame how few experienced it here in Iceland. But there is the future to make such things often. Mostly because it's so much fun to feel the world shrink underneath our feet. Anyway all our good guest came around 21:00 - then the connection to Ireland was not up anymore and because of a royal misunderstanding we never made it through again to our Irish friends. The pre run went great thanks to intercom. I am totally amazed that it did all fall into place. After the success that night I felt almost careless and somehow it would all work out the best it could on the big night. There where still tons of technical things unsolved mostly because the guy that was in charge of the live broadcast and all Internet technical matters thought he could do it alone but two days before everything he disappeared. He fucked up a couple of interactive things that where his responsibility so there was like a red alert everywhere around me - but I knew that the people that where still hanging in where totally reliable. So I was just floating in an invisible bubble of immunity to the stress. I knew that we would be able to get the live event on the net even though I would have presumed given the time that this guy had to get good reflectors connection that the event could have been seen with more ease. Next time we will use a different kind of teleconferencing software. The development in compression technology is so fast that the quality we had this time has to be put under the category of highly experimental with no funding. But there where people watching and by the letters I got after the event people where able to see it in Australia - France - Iceland - Denmark and hopefully somewhere else. There where difficulties in getting a live picture feed in USA and Canada. I got hold of the master tapes from the event and sometime this week we should have managed to make movie files and stills for you that missed the event. We are raising our hopes for that after all there will be made a documentary. Parts from the event will be used in the National TV for the presidential election night. I am happy about this. So what to say about the event. Drifting apart from the whole thing and the big hole it left inside me I feel like we did something historical in Icelandic terms. Something will evolve from this. I have promised myself never to organize such a thing again. But I do feel a hint of pride inside. Half an hour before the show I got to know that I had to be the invisible host. Looking back it was the only sensible thing to do since there where so many things that we had to cover on the spot. Anyway here is a brief description of the event.

Spying the voices if the audience there was an overall satisfaction and the enjoyment factor seems to be big. So we didn't fill the moon with people but still I am happy about how it all went by. I am thankful to so many people that I think I will have to make a special credit list page in order to do them all justice.