What is MS?

The mekka & symposium is a demo-scene party that was organized annually at Easter. More than 1200 young Multimedia artists gathered here for four days in order to meet similarly-minded people, to exchange ideas and to participate in the competitions, in which individuals and groups show off their talents in a certain form of electronic art called Demos.

ms2002 has been the eighth and last event in a traditional party series that started back in 1995, when 300 mostly German visitors attended the BlackBox Symposium. To our 2002 event, about 1220 visitors came from all over Europe, and beyond -- "sceners" have come to celebrate with us from countries as remote as Estonia and Israel!

The event was never a LAN or gaming party. People playing Qu*ke or Half-Life on our events would have been considered non-creative by our "serious" visitors, and as a matter of fact, the participation of gamers on our parties has always been exceptionally low, which made the MS one of the last big enjoyable events for real sceners.

Due to personal differences within the main organizer team, it was decided in November 2002 that the mekka & symposium would no longer take place.

Latest news on ms.demo.org:

26.01.2003 (13:50) by Raw Style

Error In Line #3
Atari sceners might want to check out the home page of the Error In Line party which also takes place at Easter!

03.12.2002 (13:38) by Raw Style

The Breakpoint Party ...
... will take place on Easter 2003 in Bingen (Germany). Some of the former MS organizers and helpers take part in organizing that party, so we would like to suggest the Breakpoint party as an alternative to the mekka & symposium if you really can't resist partying on Easter. Please stop by at their home page!

25.11.2002 (12:59) by The MS Main Organizer Team

Dear Fellow Sceners,

We will keep the upcoming information as short and painless as possible:

Due to irreconcilable personal differences within the main organizer team, the Mekka & Symposium 2003 WILL NOT TAKE PLACE. Yes, we're serious.

Some of you will shout "NO, you simply can't do that!". Believe us, it was a hard decision for us, too -- but in the end, we had to make it. If you are interested in some more explaining info, read the next few lines.

A demoparty should be fun for everybody, and this is also valid for the organizers that set the whole thing up; a good event can only be organized in a good mood, otherwise it will be a disaster. We don't want the next Mekka & Symposium to become a disaster, so we're going to stop right before this can happen.

The last few years and events were a huge success and we all had a lot of fun; this should never be forgotten by anyone, neither visitors, nor organizers! We stop right at this point to make sure that Mekka & Symposium will always be remembered as one of the best demo parties ever. All the past years it was your support and contribution, your presence and your personal efforts that made Mekka & Symposium such a great, respected and productive event and we deeply say "THANKS" for that, to each and every one of you, be it visitors or organizers.

Sincerely yours,
The Mekka & Symposium Main Organizer Team.

14.08.2002 (21:33) by Raw Style

MS2002 Party Reports
Some of the links on the reports page didn't work any longer, so I just removed them. On the other hand, Barto from the Abyss doods just sent in a link to their ms2002 photos! Enjoy!

02.07.2002 (18:21) by Raw Style

Forum works again...
We're back up. Post, post, post.

29.06.2002 (14:20) by Raw Style

Forum downtime
We're working on fixing the Forum -- please be patient.

27.06.2002 (20:06) by Raw Style

New Reports links
The guys that played the Techno Teddy live on stage at MS2002 have sent us a URL with technical info ("The Techno Teddy is a teddy bear equipped with three ultrasonic sensors and a Gameboy Advance. You can use it to make music with it, controlling it with the three sensors. One is located on the top, one on the left and one on the right.") -- Also, ReCeNa wrote in to tell us about some more photos (and a nice report in spanish) available here!

16.05.2002 (21:00) by Chaotic

Underground Conference 6.22 Sitelaunch!
The sixth Underground Conference (uc6.22), organized by members of vacuum, farb-rausch and several other supporting forces, is scheduled for 18. to 21. july this year (Thursday to Sunday), taking place in an abandoned military base in Bingen, Germany.

The underground conference is an annual demoparty that differs quite a lot - it is more or less invitation-only to filter out gamers, leechers and lame party animals. Of course the organizers will take care that every true scener gets access. It also always had and always will have very strange features and competitions. So, head over to our friends and visit uc6.untergrund.net for tons of information, releases and videos from previous uc parties.

08.05.2002 (16:26) by Raw Style

Technical problems -- resolved!
Everything's working now as expected. Please expect some minor web site problems within the next couple of days, as we're going to move to a new provider. EMails should continue to work nevertheless.

06.05.2002 (22:21) by Raw Style

Technical problems -- emails@ms.demo.org out of service!
Currently, all emails to accounts in the ms.demo.org domain are lost. Unfortunately, there's no error message -- neither for the sender, nor for the receiver -- so the issue is a bit unpleasant. The situation has been like that for about 3 or 4 days, and we hope to have it fixed real soon now!