My experience at the first Music and Technology Hackathon
Today has been a pretty busy day. The Charlotte Shout festival started. There were alot of annoying people downtown. I haven't been in a great mood because all of the terrible news, but I can't let it affect me this much. The place where I have my studio is called the VAPA Center and they celebrated their 3rd anniversary today. I stopped by for a little while to drop off somethings and then walked to where I thought the hackathon was and then realized it wasn't there and had to go to the place it actually was. Thankfully it was only two blocks.
The hackathon was at a church and it was a Music & Technology Hackathon which I'd never heard of before, but I was curious because I thought it was a novel and interesting idea so i signed up and actually showed up
I've been to hackathons before but nothing like this. There were maybe, 50 people? At the ones I've been there'd be hundreds of kids and it would actually last 24 hours. They had no coffee, no sodas. I remember there being so much caffeine at the past hackathons, because we'd have to stay up for 24 hours to finish these fucking projects!
I am not that great at coding, but I enjoy solving problems and learning new things, so hackathons have always been really cool to me. I got there late because I was at VAPA and theyd already started the workshops. I didn't get to choose, I told one of them I was a coder and they took me to the AI workshop. I don't think I would've ever chosen something like that. Ever. The guy was a Princeton grad student for some reason. He was really into making AI music and videos and I was the only one there so I could not comfortably leave the way I could if there were like 30 other students there.
Thankfully other people came, part of the assignment was to download comfyui and wouldn't you know my old ass 2018 mac does not support the resource intensive AI. I got to go into the Makey Make workshop and that was more my style.
The Makey Make workshop was really cool, the lady who taught it was sort of dry and also from New Jersey for some reason. I guess there just aren't that many creative coders here in Charlotte. I kept asking if I could buy one and they would not answer me.
I tried to code something while I was watching Matlock (of course) using the WebAudio API but I only made something very basic. Maybe I'll try to work on it more as I go further into my coding journey.
At least we got free pizza, i mean i did have to leave to get a coffee at Monarch Market ($3 for 10oz) and a diet coke ($1.60, not bad) but the food was a nice gesture and it's exciting to see things happening.
When the pizza came they started setting up to actually perform the music they were playing which makes sense because it takes the place of the demo fair of a taditional hackathon. I left early though because I didn't have anything done and I felt uncomfortable anyways.
It’s weird because I feel like I crave community with people, especially with other artists, but then when I am in community I get depressed because I’m not very good at anything.
Afterwards I got tickets to see Eraserhead at the indie.
This is like the third time I've seen it? The first time was years ago, the second time I was drunk so I think I passed out before the end. This time I saw the whole thing.
My problem was I got home really late and forgot my keys because I'm really forgetful. I rung the bell like three times maybe five minutes apart because I already felt inconsiderate but at least I was able to get into the house.