September 2014

[vimeo=https://vimeo.com/105839523]
Unfortunately Dima was only able to video twenty minutes of this concert before the battery in his camera failed and the strong wind that was blowing through the open colonnade of the venue also produced some problems with the sound quality. This is a pity because Mahesh Vinayakram, Matija and Nika Solce, Žiga Šercer, members of the band Sekete Feretlek and Duo Duo with Danila produced an evening of truly unforgettable music-making in a programme that moved seamlessly between traditional song and Indo-balkan fusion. Drawing to this music was a real joy for me and I wished that the concert could have been twice as long!

Above is a view of Grad Snežnik, pictured in this photo by Ana Jeran reflected in the clear water of the lake by day, and below, the same view at night with one of the drawings that I made during the Floating Castle Festival to accompany the groups of musicians who played beneath the arched entrance to the castle.The white painted exterior of the castle was the perfect surface for Tagtooling, with the reflections in the lake adding an extra dimension to the drawings…For the drawing below I decided to make use of these reflections in the water to create the illusion of the woman and child bathing in the lake.Musicians also played on a ‘floating stage’, moving slowly across the lake. (This was an historic wooden boat, carved from a single massive tree trunk, which had been brought by lorry from a local museum specially for the festival and had to be lowered by a team of men into the water!) For this part of the programme I drew only abstract patterns on the castle wall as a backdrop for the music.Dima took the projector from the tripod, moving it to focus on the boat at it slowly crossed the lake. As I continued to draw, this movement of the projector set up the most amazing patterns and reflections in the water and on the castle walls but unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this except for this one very dark image that I took with my little camera while I was drawing…On Friday night the band Ethnotrip was playing under the trees at the entrance to the castle. For this performance we moved the Tagtool and projector so that I could draw over the whole of the front of the castle – which was great fun! I made several drawings from this position – so here are some more photos.On Saturday night there wasn’t a performance in front of the castle so instead of moving the projector I spent the whole evening just standing drawing by the lakeside – which gave me time to develop this more detailed image.As the projection distances to both the front and side of the castle were quite long, using the 6000 lumen Acer projector which gave a large and bright image was really great (a big ‘thank you’ to Lunchmeat from Prague!). It also meant that Dima could set up our smaller projector as well as his LED lights inside Suncab’s dome tent so that people could try out the Tagtool mini for themselves. I’ll end this post with one of Christina’s drawings which, together with Dima’s lights, created a nice party atmosphere for the late night revellers…

Last week we were staying in Kozarišče for the Floating Castle Site-specific Festival at Grad Snežnik. We did a lot of Tagtooling of course, but also enjoyed the fellowship of the large number of superb musicians who had travelled from many countries to play at this ethno-festival.
We took lots of photos for the blog and I’ll begin this post with the concert that took place in the coastal town of Koper on Tuesday evening…..The sunset was beautiful when we arrived at the market square for the ‘HISTeRIA etno džem konceRtrat’ concert, which brought together musicians from Slovenia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Moldova and India.Musically, this was a most exciting concert and it was a real joy for me to have this opportunity to draw. It was quite a challenge too, because I hadn’t heard the musicians in rehearsal and had only a vague idea of the length of the programme.The combination of the height of the stage and the angle of the projector beam meant that I had to concentrate most of the white and light toned drawing on the upper part of the drop-down screen in order not to blind the musicians when they were playing – which presented yet another challenge for me!Below – all the musicians onstage to take a bow at the end of the concert. As well as taking these photos, Dima has made a video of part of this concert and when it is uploaded I will put it in another posting.

Coming soon!
Part 2 of our trip to Slovenia which will be all about the Floating Castle Festival and photos of our projections at Grad Snežnik.