Superbooth 2024 1st place hackathon
2024.05.21
As published in this article for the ATLAS Institute!
This semester, I took the Sound Lab class through the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder. Our midterm was to participate in the SynthUX 2024 Hackathon. A 4 day event in which you create an electronic instrument with a small group. We finished up the project and had hopes we’d do well, but not any expectations.
A month later we get an email back, and to all of our surprise… we actually won! First place allowed us 2 tickets to Superbooth 2024 in Berlin to be able to show off our project. We were ecstatic. We did a quick vote of who on the team should go to represent the project and I was picked as one of the representatives, along with teammate Julian Ferraro.
We hastily reached out to everyone we could at the university to try and get any funding possible to support this trip, and thankfully we got some. I immediately started filling out a spreadsheet with our itinerary (as well as researching all the best fashion boutiques and cafes in Berlin).
May 13th, 7am EST I head to the airport with 12 hours of travel ahead of me. I land in Berlin after a layover in Amsterdam and Uber to our hotel on the river. Julians already checked in and we’re still in disbelief that we’re actually here, for the biggest music technology convention in the world. We went on a 5 mile walk around where were staying to get the excitement out.
Day 2 - A whirlwind across south Berlin
JOHANN Bäckerei - splitterbrotchen✅
darklands fashion store✅
Andreas Murkudis✅
Museum of musical instruments ✅
Būya ramen factory in the beer garden✅
Humana second hand✅
voo store - fashion ✅
GATE194 - fashion✅
Five Elephant Mitte - coffee ✅
Berlin Wall memorial✅
Curry haus✅ (cash debacle)
Sunset from towers✅
A cold beer✅
Day 3 - First day of Superbooth
8am - A 15 minute bus ride to FEZ-Berlin. We get in and are the first of our booth to arrive, the first thing we see is Jeremy from the popular youtube channel, Red Means Recording, though we didn’t say hi because it was still so early. We spent all day working the booth with breaks in between to go see all the cool module synthesizers and new music gadgets. We got home and immediately fell asleep at 9:30pm
Day 4 - Second day of Superbooth
nagnagnag (underground discount high fashion store)
Zimt and zucker cafe
memorial to the murdered jews
Superbooth 4-8
Last opportunity to go out to the bars and clubs
Day 5 - Last day of Superbooth
We got to talk to the wonderful people from Chompi, Groc, Korg Japan, Torso Electronics, Moog, and so many more. I loved being able to meet the product designers behind some of these incredible products as I’d love to one day be able to design electronic instruments of my own.
Day 6 - Last day
East side gallery 30
Scheers Schnitzel (which had a great vegan seitan schnitzel)
It was such an honor to be able to win this competition and represent my school. I hope to attend Superbooth again one day for fun or maybe even for showing a real product! Travel is such an important part of expanding your worldview. Having a global perspective is crucial in design just as it is in every aspect of life. The more you see and experience, the more you can pull from when you’re creating. I just wish I had more time (and money) to keep exploring Berlin’s incredible culture. Serious thanks to Rohe at SynthUX, the people at the ATLAS school who helped fund our trip, and my mother who made all of this possible for me.
-Nick Lankau
