You can read Part I here
We started Friday with a mild hangover and missing breakfast, it was raining a lot so as Barcelonians we were set for a slow start. It was the 3,14 opening at five o ‘clock. We still had to calibrate the cameras and repair one of the 3D printers, but we had plenty of time. Makerbot’s Thing-O-Matics are “cheap” and tend to be reliable, but they are not build to be transported extensively, in our case, the screws kept loosening.
The opening went well, although most of the scans were done to artists at Piksel, so we did not interact with many “Bergensers” as we would have wanted to (it’s always good publicity, whatever that means). It was a nice and soft way to start, since artists tend to be more understanding of waiting times and the first day we always run into minor adjustments. That said, the next days we had more people from Bergen come and they were very friendly, easy going and polite, so we never had any issue with late prints. After the BYOS! show was over at 3,14 we went to USF to see Spaniards SAGAAN performance’s. I think after that, we call it a night pretty early, probably hoping to save up some energy for Saturday.
SAGAAN’s live performance mixes analog synthesis with live modulation of electromagnetic waves picking up sounds from satellites with different antennas. Using modern/open source tools like GNURadio and Gpredict, to visualize, hear and trace satellites over us. The performance was set after the satellite launch made by Orbitando Satelites team (MP19) at LABoral Center for Arts and Industrial Creation en (Saagan, 2011).
The weekend was really fun at 3, 14. This time we had more Bergensers come over and ask us questions, a few students from the Bergen National Academy of Arts and their friends came to check us out too. We had technical conversations about 3D printing, handed out blablabLAB stickers and made friends. At night we headed to USF, but we wanted no more of that electronic noise, so we crashed into a free modern jazz show going on in the same building. It was mind-blowing (!). After that we went back to the Piksel show, most of the “music” was unbearable or boring (unbearable at least brings out some emotions), but Alex McLean and Jake Harries as “Silicone Bake” saved the night. The show was based on live coding by Alex while Jake played guitar and sang spam emails as lyrics, it was hilarious. Here is a description of that night by Alex himself. Gerard and I were carrying a whiskey bottle, and shared it with Ben, Hsien and Ian, mixing it with a extremely sugary berry based syrup. I stopped drinking quite soon, I am a sugar hater.
After that we headed to Kafé Knoderen and hung out with the Norwegian Piksel kids and a few of the Scandinavian students from KHiB. Everyone from the festival was at the café and it got really crowded. At some points the guys at SAGAAN/the Spanish crew got in control of the party and the mayhem started, past Knoderen’s closing time the party was moved and OccuppySteensHotel was soon a reality, with people wreaking havoc at different rooms (everyone was really quite at the breakfast room, though). Late nigh, major blast, lifetime memories.
Next day we tried our best to wake up in time, but we had both barely slept. We were late to work (shame on us) and hardly motivated. We did a few more prints and talked even more (the more you talk to people the less other are inclined to interrupt you to get scanned/printed). Gerry had a presentation at USF, by then he had already repeated the speech so many times that he didn’t even prepare it for Piksel (I really don’t know how it went though, four people attended). Without Gerry, the scanning was stopped around two, and after that I printed the last figurines and started packing. Once done, we headed to Knipsu and packed the Haberlandt2008…it was a hard day of work, and after finishing Gerry and I bro-hugged, we had worked our asses off during the last days, and we were really tired. We assisted to the closing at Landmark and spent our last night at Bergen with Anna, Eirik, Rasmus at the Kafé Knoederen, but not for to long.
We woke at 6 AM on Monday, had a swift breakfast and ran to the bus station, Ben had joined us to our way back to the airport, since his flight was just half an hour later. Our flight was supposed to leave at 8:30 but it ran a bit late, when we got to Munich we had to run for our lives, for the whole plane trip I was coughing…I must be in terrible shape.
I really did not want to take the flight back home, I had such a good time. It was only the lack of money and clothes which forced me to leave. From the days since my first night walk I gradually fell in love with Bergen, it is one of the most beautiful places I have been, and the people there are truly amazing. I really can’t wait to be there again, year after year. It was, at so many levels, the best way to close this year, and I hope that some of the people I met during that trip will stay in my life for a long time.
As I said, this was the last trip of the year, and turned to be pretty much the closing of an important period in my life. So many things happened in 2011, I left London to live in NYC, met an incredible girl, left NY, went back, visited Philadelphia, Washington D.C. with her, came back visited Lanzarote, Latvia and Norway with blablabLAB, to come back to Barcelona and break with her. The last weeks mark probably the end of a great period in my life, and to be honest, I don’t have a clue of what the future is going to bring, but I have pretty much wasted a full week wondering.
You can read more stuff about what went on at Piksel here.