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volume 1
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niche m a ga zine
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the COPENHAGEN issue
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niche ma ga z i ne
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THE COPENHAGEN ISSUE VOLUME 1 | TEAM 4 #ISSUU10
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nicheish magazine
“Live long and prosper.�
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niche niːʃ,nɪtʃ/ noun 1. a shallow recess, especially one in a wall to display a statue or other ornament. 2. a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment.
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The Dangerous Life of a Chess Player written by slawomir smiechura
What do you think when you hear the word “Chess”? Maybe that old fashion game that kings used to play? Would it ever occur to you that it’s one of the most dangerous board games that people play? Would you think you might get hurt while playing that silly game? Boring? Apparently it was too boring for a Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh who thought it would be a good idea to combine Chess and Boxing. Yes, you read it correct, in 2003 mr Rubinhg founded CHESS-BOXING!. A game where you get to exercise your brain. Quite literally. You get to think with it and apply some head punches in hope to weaken your opponent. The rules are really simple, one round of boxing, one round of chess. A full chess-boxing match has eleven rounds, with six rounds of chess, five rounds of boxing and a 1 minute break each round. The bouts start and end in chess play. The chess can last up to three or four minutes, the boxing match can last up to three minutes. The participant only has 12 minutes to use all of his chess moves. While not that popular in States, it gets a lot of tracting in Germany, with Berlin being the mother church of Chess-boxing. With World Championship of course “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. And then I had to play chess.” “I realized that I had made a terrible mistake.” So, how about a quick game?
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“In every man a child is hidden that wants to play. First forty years of childhood are the worst.� 11
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Sand & Water
Photographing America’s West Driving over 3000 miles across your country is a great way to learn just how little you knew about your home. Driving 3000 miles in a round-about attempt to hit as many national parks and coast line as possible is an even better way to realize how little you knew. In 2012 when I moved from a suburb of Washington, DC to Oakland, Califorinia I brought my camera, my sub compact Honda Fit, and all my worldly possessions that would fit within it. I choose to excerpt scenes of the sand and water I’ve seen in the west since I started my journey. -Joshua
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Badlands National Park was one of my first stops in the west. It’s a pretty obscure national park, but it’s just as strange as obscure. Over thousands of years fierce rainstorms have eroded away the sedimentary rock -- basically sand and rocks compacted over millions of years -- and turned them into other-wordly geological formations.
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Yellow Stone National Park is so far north that even in June the park is still hovering around freezing. It’s hard getting a unique photo of a popular tourist landmark like the Upper Yellow Stone Falls. But this last chunk of snow shows both the mighty power of this 93 meter falls and the chilly weather. 14
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Oakland, California has wound up being my home since I moved. It turns out the the cranes at the Port of Oakland are also a symbol of the symbol, printed on the t-shirts, bumper stickers, hoodies and the like. This was one of my first images at home, taken from Jack London Square.
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Desert and Oregon are not two words that many people outside of the Pacific Northwest commonly associate. But as I was making my way to California I had the unexpected surprise of visiting my first desert. Lake Abert runs along the highway providing a ribbon of contrast with the white sands and the black asphalt.
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Until you’ve been to a rainforest, you never really appreciate how large the flora and fauna in these ecosystems become. As one of only two rainforests of North America the redwoods of Northern Californian are a one of a kind experience, drenched in rain, green and huge insects.
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Yosemite is famous for having one of the highest concentrations of waterfalls, including several of the tallest in North America. But there are perhaps hundreds of additional falls, especially in the late spring months when melting snow cascades down the rugged mountain ranges. 18
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Some days you get fed up with the city life, and need a quick escape to nature. On one of those days I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway towards Oregon. This happened to be one of the most magical sunsets one could ever hope for. The fog was rolling simultaneously with a brilliant orange sunset. This was one of those experiences you remember for the rest of your life.
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Big Sur is one of the two coastal waterfalls in California. It’s always dramatic to see a stream ending in a plunging cascade to the ocean.
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Rain is generally not what you look for when shooting at the Mojave desert. However this early-morning rain shower wound up providing a nice contrast with the majestic Kelso Dunes.
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“Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away.” 22
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(ni) c hess #issuu10
written by martin koch
Chess has it all. Until recently an Olympic discipline with superstar players like Kasparov and Fisher known all over the world. The stuff of legend and musicals. A driving force behind the development of machine intelligence; until IBM’s Big Blue system defeated Kasparov in 1997, it was widely believed that computers would never be able to defeat a human in chess. But there is a less well-known side of chess; variants of the game taking place in smoky back-of-the-bar gambling rooms and even in the boxing ring. According to wikipedia, there are more than 2000 variants of the game with published rules, but the possible set of variants is limitless.
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There’s a hexagonal variant of chess Chess Boxing As the name implies, chess boxing combines chess and boxing. There are 11 3-minute rounds in all; 5 rounds of boxing between 6 rounds of chess. The match can be won during boxing by knockout or technical knockout. During chess, the game can be won by mate or by exceeding the time limit. A player can resign from either chess or boxing, giving the opponent the victory. The reigning world boxing chess champion is [image credit: WCBO (world chess boxing organisation / wikipedia) The seedy underbelly Like in many other sports, there is a darker side of chess. One not seen in public, often confined to smoky back rooms in dingy bars in backwater countries only frequented by the exceptionally adventurous or suicidal. Here, disputes are settled with fists, knives, guns - and sometimes a game of drinking-chess. 26
Our intrepid photojournalist Francesco Z. (Ed: a pseudonym we use to protect his identity) captured a few scenes from a match that involved heavy drinking, betting, and a small but highly involved audience.
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PRESS PLAY ON TAPE written by Martin koch They mainly play rock-ish cover versions of Commodore 64 game tunes, although sometimes they cover other material and play some of their own compositions. Jesper Holm Olsen and Martin Koch play guitars; Andre Glasius Tischer and Theo Engell-Nielsen play keyboards, Søren Trautner Madsen plays the drums, and Uffe Friis Lichtenberg plays the bass. See www.PRESSPLAYONTAPE.com
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GROWING UP The shape, the color, the smell, the SOUND! So many memories come to mind when thinking about the Commodore 64 that we all grew up with when we were teenagers back in that magic time in the eighties. Turning on the machine and seeing that “READY.”-prompt that invited you to start learning how to program and play with the computer was a fantastic introduction to computing. In rooms lit only by the TV-screen we would sit and play the games for hours on end and listen to the music. Modern game music is basically a mood-setting movie score with no restrictions, but working with the limitations of an 8-bit computer, the composer had to create a catchy tune using very little memory and come up with clever ways to tweak synthesizer and drum sounds out of the 3-voice “SID” sound chip on the Commodore 64. A true artform. Composers like Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish, Martin Galway, Fred Gray, Mark Cooksey, Tim Follin, David Whittaker, and Richard Joseph were rock stars for us. We would record the tunes on cassette and listen to that on a Walkman instead of contemporary pop hits. Friends and family found us weird, trying to push that music at parties would fail, and using the words “SID music” never worked as a pickup line. Nevertheless, we enjoyed listening to those
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The theme from Ghosts’n Goblins performed live at the NDC developer conference in Oslo, Norway 2013. Photo by Inger Renate Moldskred/Macsimum Event
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THE MAGIC OF GAMES
tars along with aggressive synths to make the tunes come alive.
These days, everyone is used to high quality graphics on retina displays, so when you look at screenshots from those games today, it is hard to believe that it actually was deeply immersive to dive into a world of caves in Boulderdash, drive the race tracks in Pitstop II, test your karate skills in Exploding Fist, slay the ghouls in Ghosts ’n Goblins, infiltrate the fortress in Last Ninja, bounce the ball in Arkanoid, wield your sword in Nemesis the Warlock, defend your castles in Defender of the Crown, collect colors in Wizball, do interstellar space trading in Elite, defeat robots in Paradroid, and jump around as a Thing on a Spring.
In the beginning we focused on sounding like a rock band, but over the years we’re just doing what we feel is right in terms of the sounds. We’ll use real analogue synths, a real SID chip, and samples from the original games to get the sound we want. The sound of the SID is quite special. It is thin, but powerful and raw all at once. And slightly hissy and distorted in a way that our parents hated but we learned to love. The sound is still so distinct that fans of commodore 64 music are able to recognize that sound chip anywhere it’s being used. Even if it just for a small effect in a piece of modern pop music.
Maybe the spaceship in Thrust didn’t look like a real one, but the reverse gravity levels were fun to complete by turning your TV upside down. Ok, the piranha level in Aztec Challenge was impossible to play on a black and white TV because you couldn’t see those swimming killers, but that had its own charm. And, granted, Commando might be far too short a game, but you could complete it by throwing only a couple of grenades for an additional challenge!
Our driving force, which remains today, is to revive those tunes and bring back the memories for ourselves while hanging out as friends. Occasionally, someone will book us to play and we’ll have a lot of fun sharing our passion with others. This has also lead to some amazing experiences, like meeting our childhood heroes Rob, Ben, Martin, et al., being part of the awesome remix community, and playing at big music festivals.
LOADING, READY, RUN Many years later we all met at the university and found out that we had a common fondness of those old game tunes. This was in the end of the ‘90s where there was a vibrant remix community doing remakes of the music mainly as dance floor music. We always heard those tunes as rock, so we wanted real drums, real bass, distorted gui-
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THE FUTURE OF THE COMMODORE 64 Kids of the new generation won’t be playing FIFA, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, or any games for that matter on the Commodore 64, but we’ll do our bit to keep this amazing cultural heritage alive and kicking by playing the music (and you, dear reader, are doing it by reading this book). So let’s keep telling the story and ROC=K ON!
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VIDEO EMBED
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Live at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark 2008 on Guitar Hero game controllers that trigger samples to perform the music from the Danish Commodore 64 game Tiger Mission! Photo by Mette Kirstine Bie
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Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so hasty to deal out death in judgement. -Tolkien 36
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Last weekend my wife and I went to a birthday party. There was a DJ playing and at some point, my wife asked me, “What is he doing back there and how hard can it be?”.
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I’ve been listening to DJ’s and mixes for more than 20 years and also played a bit myself. It’s mainly within electronic genresOver the time equipment has changed a lot, but the basics of DJ’ing has stayed the same. Essentially, DJ’ing is about putting tracks together to form a continuous stream of music. To do that, you need a mixer and 2 sources of sound. The sources of sound used to be turntables with the Technics SL-1200 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_SL-1200, http://images.cdn.stuff.tv/sites/ stuff.tv/files/styles/main-fullwidth/public/news/sl1210_0. jpg?itok=3hUhBG4H&timestamp=1423156925) being the favorite for many, but today sources include CDJ’s (advanced CD players), MP3-players, laptops, samplers, keyboards and other soundproducing equipment. Mixers has also changed, from being very simple with a crossfader, volumes and 3-band equalizer per source, to modern mixers that have effects, samplers, wave-
form-displays, can loop, beat-detection and much more. For many starting out to become a DJ, all of this has been replaced with a laptop, which act as both mixer and soundsource, with some external controller. It’s even possible to start out with a tablet or phone (http://pacemaker.net/) Besides the equiment, you also need a good ear and a sense of rhythm. To perform a mix between two tracks, you would put on track A and track B. While track A is playing, you’d queue up track B. Normally, you’d perform what’s called “Beatmatching”. There’s two steps to doing that - first you’d need to make the tempo of the two tracks you want to mix, the same. It’s normally possible to change the tempo up to +/- 10%, but depending on the style of music, it can sound a bit strange. So knowing the speed of a track and match them up, so there’s only a tiny difference in speed, is also part of DJ’ing. Really knowing your tracks is key. When the tempo is the same, you then need to match the beats. So when the snare hits in track 1, you
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also want the snare to hit in track 2. And not just that, you want it to hit at the same time. Most music that is used when DJ’ing is 4/4, that means you can count like.. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. So to match the beats, you need to match up the 1’s. Matching the tempo and timing requires a lot of practice, but modern mixers can actually match the tempo for you, so you only need to think about the timing. I think it’s cheating, but it helps to make those flawless transitions again and again. To make transitions between tracks even more smooth, there’s more to do. It’s very common to use the equalizers to filter out different spectres of a track, while at the same time, you filter in those parts of the new track. Fx, if track A is playing and B is queued up, you could remove everything but the bass from track B and start to fade that in. Slowly you’d remove the bass of track A, and now you’d have track A going only in the high frequencies, while track B would start from the bottom frequencies. Over time you’d continue to add/remove frequencies from the tracks, and within 30 sec you’d have a very smooth transition. Really long transitions is one of my favorites, when you can’t really hear if it’s one or the other and a new track emerges in the middle for a few minutes. It requires the right tracks with long in- and out-tros or use of loops or samples, to keep it flowing.
If your musical taste is within the hiphop and rap genres, then scratching and precise pickup movements is the skills you want to learn. That’s out of my league, though. So, what I consider the most important skill as a DJ today is composition or sequencing. This is then when DJ’ing becomes an artform and beauty emerges. Composition is about the order of tracks and the atmosphere you want to build up. This requires many many hours of listening to tracks and exploration. On sites like Beatport.com most of the electronic music released is published. My guess is that 500+ new tracks are released every day in 50+ different genres. Finding the gold among these takes a lot of time. When I briefly wanted to pursue a carrier of DJ’ing, I listened to a few hundred new tracks a week, often only finding 1 or 2 tracks that I really liked. Another source of “Gold” is digging through tracklistings from your favorite DJ’s and pick up on the different artists they play, but this is also timeconsuming, and also you don’t just want to copy another DJ, but rather develop your own style. When composition is at it’s best, the DJ can take you through different feelings, emotions, genres and states of mind. There are different kind’s of DJ’s.
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favorite DJ’s and some mixes that There’s the newcomer, that might really shine. be playing the classics to keep people happy and dancing. The Laurent Garnier: I think the first mixes might mess up a bit, but time of heard of Garnier was when most people won’t hear it after a I listened to the single, “Wake few beers. The focus is on mixing up” (https://www.youtube.com/ and getting everything right. watch?v=TAvX57LeAZE), from 1993. He’s made a lot of music Then there’s the party DJ, who himself, but his skills as a DJ is just wants everybody to go as crazy amazing. I’ve heard other DJ’s say as him :) Usually a lot of different “Laurent plays the tracks, that you genres and tracks, and it’s all about didn’t know exist”. getting the crowd to cheer and In his Essential Mix from 2000 he party. Effects is often used way too goes through so many genres in much, and it’s either a sign of the 2 hours and it’s amazing how he DJ being to drink or not spend- manages to put it together. Starting any time on composition. This ing out with hiphop, he moves into kind of DJ will often also control come classic techno, then house, smokemachines and light, to real- progressive, back to techno, and ly get everything going. somehow into something out of Woodstock, electro and back to The hiphop DJ’s are a different a trancy ending. (https://www. kind. Composition is extremely mixcloud.com/classic_house_miximportant since a lot of scratch- es/laurent-garnier-essential-mixing will be happening and that re- 2000-01-30-radio-1/) quires the right sounds to be bend and twisted. Often they’re just lay- Sasha: ing the groundwork for the MC Another of the DJ’s that been in that’s doing some rappin’ on top. game for many years, defining genres and styles. He might be And then there’s the composition responsible for the mix that I’ve DJ’s, where it’s all about creating heard the most through times, 2 that special atmosphere. This is hours Essential Mix out of Maida DJ’s that you can just listen to, but Vale studios, using Ableton Live to also dance and chillout. This is the bring us through his set. It’s very ones I like and prefer to listen to. listening friendly and hopefully it can bring a few chills through So, to conclude, here’s some of my your body along the way. When
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listening, try to pick out the underlying beat which is playing through the first hour and changing in the second hour. It’s keeping the mix going, even when the tracks played, intermezzos. (https://www. mixcloud.com/BBCEssentialMix/sashalive-from-maida-vale-the-abbleton-setessential-mix-22052005/)
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Ritchie Hawtin: One of the best techno DJ’s outthere, best known for his use of effect-machines, 3 decks and samplers in his session. A classic example is his album from 1999. https://www.mixcloud.com/TechnopodMan/richie-hawtin-decks-efx-909/ John Digweed: My favorite DJ and recognised as one of the best - his sequencing is second to none. Anything he touches is gold in my ears. He became legendary in ‘96, when he did the Northern Exposure CD’s together with Sasha. He’s also the founder of the label, Bedrock, which have produced some of the biggest and most legendary tracks through times. The best way to hear what he does is to listen to his more-than-weekly show, Transitions. https://www.mixcloud.com/johndigweed/
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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.� 43
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“Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.� 44
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excerpts of life
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written and designed by francesco zanetti
Towards the end of 2015, I got interested in photography (once again), so I decided to “try a bit harder” and, armed with my camera, I started. Having completed Excerpts of Life I now have a collection of disparate pictures, with no common theme whatsoever. And then I began wondering: what should I do with these pictures? I mean, I look at them every now and then - usually questioning all sort of technical details like framing, lights, depth of field and so on. But wouldn’t it be nice to make something with my 365 project, giving them some purpose? As I mentioned, there was no common theme linking my photos, but then an idea popped into my mind: what if these were not just pictures, snapshots of everyday life, but the image that forms in your mind when you are reading a book? And what sort of book could that be? A thriller? Sci-fi? Adventure or romance perhaps? Man, I’d love some cyber-punk there. So I selected a couple of them - not necessarily the best ones, photographically speaking - and stuck a sentence or two on them. And, I don’t know about you, but I think this is pretty niche-ish. Go on, look at the pictures, read their excerpt. Maybe come up with a new one or write the full story. It’ll be fun, I promise!
Francesco 46
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The glimmering, calm water managed to calm him down. Suddenly Joy started connecting the dots, while pondering on his next move.
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The city itself was cold. You could feel it from the surface of the icy streets, deep down into the bowels of its sewer system.
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Despite the pain, he kept walking. For he still had a job to do - no, it was his goal, the reason why his old, tired, limbs were still moving. It was his duty.
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It was there, standing by the traffic light with her mom,
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that Anna thought “this is the happiest moment of my life!”. So far!
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Kaoru, at this point, was really confused. What was going on? Where was he? All these questions storming in his otaku head, and he had not yet realized that it wasn’t night anymore.
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And like the small cogs, unaware of their role in the bigger machine, they moved. And the machine ticked: another day slipped by.
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The day after, all the village rejoiced. The nightmare was, finally, over.
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They crossed paths, once again. But this time they did not know each other anymore; something had change.
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“Come on Leonard”, said David while spreading his wings, “We have a long journey in front of us”.
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“Well, there is no point in indulging in wishful thinking anymore” thought Carl. And he was right, though he couldn’t imagine 60
what was waiting for him at the end of the stairs.
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The answer had to be in a book. They just knew it. Now the only problem was, which one?
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The day passed by quickly. Business had been slow,
She boringly glanced at the unsold pastries, and de
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, as there were less and less people coming to the park.
ecided that she had waited long enough.
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The turning heads as she walked by were a proof that, today too, she have done a good job.
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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.� 66
-Philip K. Dick
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“If P = NP then I can implement it.”
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