Monthly Archives: August 2013

The white painted exterior of the old town armoury with its small windows and crow-step gable proved to be a most interesting ‘canvas’ for Tagtool drawing and with the wide throw of the 10,000 lumens (very big and expensive!) projector provided by Lunchmeat it was possible to cover the whole of the building with wonderfully vibrant colour even before it became dark.For the spectators standing in the square in front of the building there was a completely unobstructed view of the projections – and also for me at my Tagtool workstation. The weather was dry and warm – in short, the ideal conditions for an outdoor Tagtool performance!
Here are more photos of some of the drawing sequences (easy to spot the ones that were taken by Dima – they’re all in focus and better quality than mine!)
With this very powerful 10,000 lumen projector it was possible to get some really strong yellows and ochres (which was really great, as bright yellows like this are just not possible with the equipment we have at home!)
For my next posting I will have some video, but in the meantime – once more a big ‘thank you’ to Lunchmeat for arranging this great Tagtooling opportunity for us and also to the sponsors of this event in České Budějovice, Jihočeská televize and Budweiser Budvar.

Today we are in České Budějovice in the south of the Czech Republic to make a live outdoor drawing performance as part of the town’s visual arts festival.We will be projecting on to this beautiful 14th Century building and for this performance I will be using my ‘old-school’ Tagtool. So this seems like a good time to explain why for this particular performance I have chosen to use my very large, heavy and cumbersome old D.I.Y. Tagtool all-in-one instead of the neat, light and portable iPad on which I have the Tagtool for iPad app.

Recently Tagtooler Benjamin Rabe posted this comment about the iPad app. on the Tagtool facebook page, ‘The way you interact with Tagtool (to me) is essentially different to all other painting apps out there. It doesn’t emulate any pick-a-brush and dip-it-into-color behaviour. It doesn’t resemble matter-based creation at all….’
I agree that this is indeed the very special thing about the Tagtool for iPad app.- and it is this same characteristic of the ‘old-school’ Tagtool that makes for a very special drawing experience too! However, there are some differences (other than size and convenience) between the two Tagtools that I would like to write about now.

Here is a photo of a multiplayer session that Maki and I did recently at a barbecue in the yard of Gerard’s studio. For this event the iPad was the obvious choice, and not just because it was so easy to carry to the location and quick to set up!As the collage of photos above shows, what we produced was in effect an animated mural, which also incorporated the shadows of objects and plants in the yard and the people at the barbecue into the visual mix. And although people at the barbecue were able to see our drawing and animation as the work progressed, rather it was this animated mural, the ‘end product’ rather than the process of making the drawing and the animation, that was the real focus of the session – the creation of a temporary animated mural to act as an ever moving backdrop to the evening’s entertainment.
Working collaboratively like this using the iPad app. is really magic! The process of looking down at the little image on your iPad and then seeing it projected so large on the wall, the (really great) feature of being able to ‘home in’ on this image to draw in detail and sharing your drawing with other players in the session, the possibility of multi-touch drawing using all your fingers, the ‘pinching and spreading’ movements to control colour, line size etc. and the exciting animation features – all these things make drawing with the Tagtool for iPad a very special experience – just as Benjamin Rabe says. Certainly, animation using the ‘old-school’ Tagtool (which really needs two people to operate properly, one drawing and the other animating with the gamepad) is quite primitive in comparison, so for visual storytelling and animated mural painting the Tagtool for iPad wins hands down!
However, despite being so cumbersome, heavy and awkward to transport I still love my ‘old-school’ D.I.Y. Tagtool all-in-one dearly and I don’t consider it to be just a big old dinosaur, fit only to be consigned to our heap of dead electronics in the basement……
Here’s why – the ‘old-school’ Tagtool has some really vital characteristics when used for drawing as a live performance art form. In this kind of performance (especially when accompanied by live improvised music) both the process and the progress of making the projected drawing visible in real time for the audience becomes as important or indeed, more important, than producing a ‘finished’ piece of artwork. (And in this kind of live performance drawing I rarely use any animation). For me, the most important thing then becomes the actual physical act of ‘drawing blind’ with the stylus on the pressure sensitive surface of the drawing tablet while directing the focus of my attention instead onto the projected image. (I find that I need only very occasionally to glance down at the Tagtool sliders to adjust colour, opacity etc.). As well as being able to release, instantly ‘kill’ an image and draw something new or to draw a new image over an existing one, with the ‘old-school’ Tagtool it is possible to release a drawing in progress, partially fade it, then continue to draw into the remaining ghostly image – or to draw over an existing image then use the fade slider to make the underlying drawing miraculously ‘reappear’ – some really great features of the ‘old-school’ Tagtool in a live drawing performance!

In conclusion – I think that both the Tagtool for iPad and the ‘old-school’ D.I.Y. Tagtool are really wonderful inventions that together have opened up a whole new world of drawing experiences – so do seek out an opportunity to try out both of them, if you are reading this and haven’t already joined the growing band of ‘Tagtoolistas’ worldwide!

This little video is from a performance given on our arrival in Izola, when I made a sequence of Tagtool drawings on the wall of the church in Manzioli Piazza to accompany the open air concert by Kate Young which was held in the square.

Unfortunately something went wrong with the camera Dima was using and initially he thought we had no record at all of this concert. However, somehow he managed to salvage these fragments and put together this speeded-up version of some of my drawings. This means of course, that the song and the images don’t fit together – for instance, the last sequence shows flowers and leaves, and, if you look carefully, some caterpillars eating the leaves (which was the subject of another song in the programme). Before the concert we had no time to discuss what I should draw so I had to rely on Kate’s introduction to each of her songs to make suitable accompanying images – quite a challenge!

To end this post here are some photos kindly sent to me by Joachim Gross.Above, two nice photos of the musicians and the audience and in the pictures below, one of the younger members of the audience doing some drawing – as usual the children all wanted to ‘have a go’ with the Tagtool after the concert!

Here is Dima’s video showing K.U.N.T.Z. performance at Festival HISTeRIA.

The animal song featured in this video is The Donkey, with vocals provided by David and Jan on drums. The dance improvisation of the donkeys and the wolf is by members of the festival Butoh dance group. In the background of the video you can see part of my Tagtool drawings and Dima’s visuals are derived from the hundreds of still photos that Damian made during the performance.

The donkey song lasts for 6 minutes so – sit back, turn up the volume and enjoy!