For anyone who wants to know the gory details of what went into our CE09 set, here you go...

Camp Euforia '09 has come and gone, and once again Euforquestra put together an excellent festival. This was my fourth year attending Camp Euforia, so it was really cool to be a performer instead of a spectator this year. Euforquestra seemed a bit unsure of what they had gotten themselves into as they got the details of what we were planning to do, but they were willing to give us a chance and grew more flexible and accomodating once it became clear we knew what we were doing and would do it right. Kyle Ford (from Pyrotechniq) and I spent two afternoons and evenings (Wed & Thurs) setting up for our set; hanging projectors, screens, video cable, power cable, blacklights, a giant 14'x18' outdoor screen, a video camera, and a tree-mounted projector platform. Kyle and I built four pieces of staging (Kyle built two of them by himself while I was at work), the giant screen, and the projector platform especially for this show. We had a ceiling-hung video camera set up to provide a live feed of the barn show to the outdoor projector so we could project a live feed from inside the Yacht Club stage onto the side of the barn outside. When the main stage was going we ran our Insectoid 'In-between' video out to the screen for some trippy visuals. Originally, Heatbox, who played before us on the main stage, was scheduled to only play 1/2 hour, which meant JC Brooks would have to get off stage and we would have to get all our stuff set up within 30 minutes. There was no way that was going to happen, so Euforquestra asked Heatbox to play an hour set instead, to which he graciously obliged. An hour was enough, and we were ready to rock when Heatbox finished. The long late-night set was grueling, and much longer than what we're used to playing. I felt like the quality of my performance slipped as the night went on, and my voice got more difficult to control. In retrospect we probably would have been better off playing a shorter set, but for the late-night slot a long set is pretty much expected. I was exhausted after our 2 1/2 hour set, I don't know how The Gglitch or We Funk manage to do 4 hour sets. Pyrotechniq put on a great performance, despite the limitations of the low stage and low ceiling, and I think they were challenged, too, by the long set and coming up with performances to cover over 2 hours of material. I had a new disc prepared with four new videos, but I had taken it out of the DVD player and put in the old one earlier in the evening, since the older disc had a longer loop of the in-between footage (so the video on the outdoor screen wouldn't repeat as often). I forgot to put the new disc in before the show, and when we got to the first tune that had a new video I couldn't find the new disc. It turned out the disc was sitting on top of the DVD rack, but Colin had set the bubble fogger platform on top of it. So that was several hours of work for nothing. We finished our set about 3:30am, and I had to get on a plane in Cedar Rapids at 7:00am to go to my sister-in-law's wedding (it was pretty much either get to the wedding or get a divorce, so not going wasn't really an option), so we had to bust ass to get all our stuff torn down and packed up by 5:30am so I could get to the airport in time. When we finished our set Pyrotechniq took over and did a DJ set, so we were tearing down around an ongoing performance, which made it even more difficult. Somehow we managed, though, and I drove out of Camp Euforia at 5:00am, unhooked the trailer at my house, and drove to the airport. We got back to IC Monday afternoon and I headed back out to Jerry's farm to finish getting our stuff out - taking down all the cables, the projector platforms, the screens, the giant screen, the staging, etc, etc. Kyle Ford helped again with all that. Many thanks to Kyle for all his help, there's no way I could have gotten everything done without him.

Loren
Insectoid