Slopfest #61 · 1987 · Vienna

Pronounced Correctly

A new image format arrived with 256 colors and a pronunciation war. We took both sides, loudly.

Dithered 256-colour GIF, wide: a bar in three shades of beige, a man playing bongos, blinking pixel text reading SLOPFEST #61

Venue: Loos Bar, in shifts of twenty
Attendance: 5,700
Guest of honour: Richard Feynman (played bongos under the 256-color banner all night)
Also spotted: A Rick Astley poster the committee tried to take down three times. It kept coming back.
Fun fact: 256 colors, 3 of them beige

What happened

The festival was restricted to 256 colors, and most of the budget went on choosing them. Beige made the cut three times. Richard Feynman played bongos under the banner all night. A song called 'Never Gonna Give You Up' played in the cloakroom. Nobody thought anything of it.

Elsewhere in 1987

CompuServe introduces the GIF image format, limited to a palette of 256 colors.

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