26c3

Two weeks ago, between Christmas and New Year’s, I attended the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26c3) in Berlin, the anual hackers conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club. I had never been to any c3 before, and I didn’t know anyone else attending. So I was rather excited about what would happen there.

Long story short: It was a very inspiring experience. I saw and met many people with (on the first glance) crazy ideas, who didn’t wait but just acted on those ideas (e.g. 3d-printing at home, finally playing well known game shows with interesting questions, or saving Wikipedia).

One of the most interesting talks for me personally was Audrey Penven speaking about “Photography and the Art of Doing it Wrong”, the essence of which was: Whenever you do something, and you make a mistake, or the technology fails you, try looking on the bright side and explore the possibilities these mistakes offer. Audrey talked a lot about doing photography in ways everyone else would consider wrong. But by doing it wrong, she - and many others - create wonderful art you couldn’t do any other way. Too see what I mean you should look at Audrey’s webpage and download the recording of her talk.

btw: Almost every talk at 26c3 was recorded and can be downloaded from the conference webpage.

To further illustrate this, I am happy to present one creative mistake myself. Of course it’s a musical recording, specifically an early rehearsal recording of our keyboarder’s top hit single “It’s Not You”. Here, her voice is amplified via a bass guitar amp only because the rehearsal room PA was not there that night. This makes for a great and very fitting sound in this song, and we’ll have to play with that kind of stuff much more often I think. Here you go:

Note: This song is not (yet) Creative Commons licenced as it is not my own work!