On Saturday 16 July we drove from Prague to Berlin to take part in the Summer of Tagtool II event at Mica Moca Club – an evening of open air Tagtool performances in the courtyard of this former factory.When we arrived there was a very lively atmosphere with musicians playing, families sitting in the courtyard in the sunshine and all over the buildings there were installations and pieces of artwork, some by visiting artists and others made by local groups.
Dima set up all the equipment in one of the empty rooms so that Bego, Dieter Puntigam and I had an opportunity to test everything before the evening performances and then when it began to get dark we took the projectors and Tagtools outside into the yard.
When we were drawing Ernst kindly took these photos for me with my small camera. Below is a sequence of images from my first drawing….
….and below are some stills from Dieter’s performance.
The enclosed courtyard was very dark at night – which was ideal for Tagtooling – and the pattern of the windows and brickwork gave a nice added texture to the drawing.
July 2011
We provided the visual accompaniment for Anja Kaufmann‘s music in her performance on Friday 15 July at the Echofluxx Experimental Music and New Media Festival in Prague.In the photo above Dima is setting up our equipment in the main hall at Trafačka Gallery, an old power station building in Prague that has found a new life as artists’ studios. For this performance we used three projectors; the two that are visible in the photo covered the whole of the back wall and extended on to the side walls of the gallery and the third was positioned for back projection behind the translucent screen in the centre. Initially, Anja thought that she would perform behind this screen so that her silhouette could become part of my Tagtool drawing. However, in that position she could not see what I was drawing so instead she set up her laptop next to my Tagtool.
In the photo below you can see the new (temporary!) modification that Dima made to my Tagtool specially for this performance. He extended the top of my Tagtool All-in-one so that I could have two Wacom tablets side by side, one to handle the drawing on the wall and the other the back projection on the screen – but best of all, with the one pen I could draw on either of the tablets or draw continuous lines from one to the other.
Dima had video footage to project behind my drawing and for the performance he also put live video of Anja’s performance into the mix on the back projection. Needless to say this was all very complicated to set up and we had some very anxious moments before he got everything working…..
I was too busy drawing to take any photos during the performance but Dima took video which I will put in a later posting.
As well as the still images that I put in the previous posting, Dima also made videos of all of our Kunstwekstatt sessions. Here are two of them. (I’ll put the others on the blog when Dima has had time to do the editing.)
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/26030542 w=400&h=225]
Supra+ from Frances Sander on Vimeo.
The video above comes from the session where I was drawing with the band by myself and the second clip below, which is much longer, is from one of the sessions where Maki and I were drawing together.
[vimeo http://http://www.vimeo.com/26043324]
And now for a bit of advertising!
If you would like to see this band perform live with more of our Tagtool drawing and are in London at the end of July, here are some dates for your diary….
Thursday 28 July, at The Victory, 281 Kingsland Road, E2 8AS
Friday 29 and Saturday 30 July (as part of the Hackney WickED Festival),at Liquid Studios, 55 Wallis Road, E9 5LH
Last weekend we were in Austria rehearsing with Maki and Supra+, getting ready for our performances in London at the end of this month.At the Kunstwerkstatt, Tulln, once Dima and the band had set up all the equipment, we were able to have some very intensive playing and drawing sessions.
The photos above are from the first session where only I am drawing but in the ones that follow Maki and I are drawing together.
It was a real marathon – more that five hours of drawing in total – and this time all of Dima’s camera equipment worked perfectly, with the result that rather than having not enough photos for the blog I now have so many that it has been difficult to make a choice!
The full set can be seen in this Picasa web album and my next posting will have some of the video footage from what was a really inspiring and fun weekend!