THE FUTURE-STATION PARTY

This party is so technologically advanced that our team cannot likely attain it until 2005-2006!  It involves a couple/few laptops, maybe PDAs, WIFI, and RFID tags.  It also has the usual staples of blacklights, starscapes, alien costuming, and stuff we've done for *The Cafe at the End of the Universe*.... just an order of magnitude or three beyond that.

AMBIANCE

First step is ambiance... we're trying to create a total immersion experience into an alien station, with cafe, dance/stage/entertainment area, relax area, food service, etc.  For beginners, we'll work with the familiar cafe experience; blacklights, Christmas lights, in a hotel/event space that already sings of chrome and polish.  Next bit we add include spacescape murals (I'm designing in Blender 3D for large-scale reprints), video projection of embarking & departing starships, and on more laptop for the Music Jukebox.  Lots of software already exists to allow party patrons to select songs for the playlist/requestlist.

Now, onto the heavy stuff, we add WIFI to the mix, and RFID tags (Radio Frequency ID tags, like the ones in video stores, or the kind replacing UPC barcodes in Wal*Mart).  These are just foil-printed stickers, so they're cheap and getting cheaper. (Billions will be produced for this next year in the retail sector.)  They can attach to people, objects, drink coasters, and other secret prizes.  Imagine being able to walk up to a laptop and ask aloud "Computer, where is Jack?"  It can then reply "Jack Borkowski is sitting at the third seat of the bar."  Imagine further that when you get there, the person really sitting at that seat is Bev Hater, because Jack has actually removed his ID Badge and stuck in under her barstool.

Foggers are cool... they now make cheap foggers based on Peltier devices, which heat and refrigerate opposite sides simultaneously... like solidstate dry ice.  No oils required, it directly fogs plain water electronically.  You can buy a $25-$70 version in garden shops, or I can try building one slightly cheaper.

Okay, video projection sounds pricey... if you own the equipment it put you out a grand or so.  Even if it's company property, a replacement lamp could cost $200.  Still, if I ever get thee income for it, I will have one of these.  If not, I will someday rent one.  (There's a shop in Covington off Greenup by the bridge that rents these for weekends.)  On a cheaper note, I've been looking over dollar-store items that I can turn into 'the pocket planetarium' for dirt cheap.

Invitations must STRONGLY suggests to come dressed as the alien of your fantasies... THIS *IS* A COSTUME PARTY.  Even though it could be made part of a con, as was The Cafe, it just works best when all players are participants, and not redneck spectators in plaid who come in for a beer.  Escapism and Immersion are the goals.

Music should erase all folky country-western crap.  The future is rich with optimism as well as suspenseful paranoia, and the music should reflect that.  There are good selections from the pop charts (Moby "Made of Stars," or Air "Surfing on a Rocket") that fit the motif, as well as groups and eurobands that fit the role nicely (Nightbeat & Ethereal). http://hem.passagen.se/dachande/ "The tribal dance sound of the space age."  Next time you catch me with my laptop, request a sample.

Radiotag games can be had by modifying the hardware or software.  Changing software allows the computer to withhold the easy information, allowing for "guessing games" and other online interaction.  Webcams can allow networked videoconferencing... corner to corner, or room to room.  modifying the sticker, clipping the antennae shorter, allows limited range hunts where hand devices (Palms) are needed to hunt down the prize emitter.

And you know the possibilities with blacklight.  If i can get 50 UV LEDs from e-Bay for $3.50, I can wire them to AA batteries for blacklight flashlights costing about $0.30 each, given away to paid guests.  These can then be used to read invisible markings, from hand stamps to secret messages.

SECURITY LOCKS

It was great fun those six/seven years back hosting 'The Quiet Naked Room' in Toronto Trek... We had a little naked interaction, but what really sold it was leaving it to the imagination and *excluding* the masses... a secure, artificial scarcity.

A Future-Station should have a high-security access lock, like an airlock, that leads into the most radical, uninhibited room of the party.  (Like the Norwescon legends of goth chicks making out together?)  But how do you secure this room / airlock?  With RFID tags, of course.  At Siemens Biz Svcs, we used these just to get onto the elevator.  Companies put them in ID badges... but e-bay sells them as keychain fobs.

WEB SERVERS

It doesn't take a tower or blade station to run servers for a big or small network.  CS students are traditionally expected to wire crap into the web... why leave your chair to get a soda from down the hall unless you're making a fully informed decision?  A *REAL* CS student would have embedded a webserver (likely a palm) that can report the quantity and temperature of each selection - so he can know what he wants, if it's worth th effort, without ever leaving his terminal station.

Web Servers, portals, are the key to all networked transactions these days.  At a party, that means the DJ has a playlist of songs, and a selection for requests, available to any webserver on the premisis.  It means static info is easily presented, like scheduled activities, menu items, and featured guests... as well as dynamic content which can fluxuate with availability.... like scheduled activities, menu items, and featured guests. :-)

Personally, I plan to study more about the underlying technology of X11-Window Servers... It may be possible to centrally control every display we set up in the place.  Pre-empted Newscasts and priority updates of info can be placed over top whatever people are in the middle of doing.

Meanwhile, it'd just be cool to let anyone from any station to request songs from the DJ selection, view menus from the hospitality suite, video chat, and ask the computers obtuse questions.  Maybe Eliza would speak rhetorical responses.

IN HOUSE VIDEO

Most hotels have cable arranged in such a way that an in-house cable channels can be tuned in every room, allowing stuffed suits to display schedules and seminars, or places like MarCon to play marathons of X-Files and Ranma 1/2, which they indeed have done past years.

Video marathons are cool... frees up the 'video room' idea for more pertinent programming in those paid spaces.  But there is also a creative opportunity for artistic expression in the Future-Station escape we have created.  Back when I had a video cam, I was on the brink of producing Tourism commercials for the Sol-3 Tourism Bureau... and Talk Shows of celebrity aliens.  Tonight, Jelly Springhead will be interviewing Darth Vader, and then secretly reunite him with his two estranged Jedi children.

One more thing that might make a cool marathon of shows for an in-house channel are the best of the fan-produced scifi movies that are all available on the web.   American Jedi, Troops, various spoofs on SW, ST, Matrix, and all the others.  come to think of it, a lot of Prime Time TV has parodied these too, so That 70's Show take on Star Wars, The Wonder Years take on ST:Spock's Brain - TONS of materials for a humor-filled marathon.  (What a perverse thought... If Donna/Leah was 'really digging' the asthmatic Darth Vader, she might have hitched up with her own dad!  Eeew!)

Who else do we know that can contribute their techie mad-scientist propensities toward the invention of a new level rave experience?

- joel