Monthly Archives: September 2017

On Saturday 9 September we were at the festival Cool v Plote which features solo performers both from the Czech Republic and abroad. I was drawing to accompany German drummer and percussionist, Christian Prommer who was performing in the courtyard of the Sladovna, the former town brewery which has now been beautifully converted into an exhibition and events venue. As can be seen in the photo above, this was a great venue for an outdoor drawing performance but unfortunately the day was dull and cloudy and the weather forecast was not good. For the evening performances there was a covered stage adjacent to the sladovna building, the fountain was turned off and the organisers had erected a covered housing for the projector (in the photo below) – but there was not enough space under the gazebo to completely cover both the sound equipment and my Tagtool. These photos are from Dima’s phone (hence the rather grainy images). Because of the bad weather forecast he didn’t set up the camera – which proved to be a wise decision, as  half way through the performance it began to rain quite hard. This was really sad as the music was great and people were dancing in front of the stage. When the rain started most of the audience took cover under the big umbrellas outside the bar but some brave souls did remain standing in the rain or sitting on the benches in front of the stage. I began by drawing this urban scene incorporating some of the real windows of the sladovna building into the drawing of the houses. I continued to draw but my Wacom tablet began to get quite wet and I was concerned that the rain would get inside and damage the computer so I had to put the top on the box and leave the unfinished image before the end of the performance. The photo below shows the final drawing before the rain put paid to my work!Fortunately when it was time to pack up all the equipment the rain had nearly stopped. However, all our cables were soaking wet so the organisers helpfully arranged for us to layout everything in a room of the sladovna and I’m glad to say that when we collected our equipment the next morning everything was dry and OK.

We spent two days in Linz, arriving on Thursday 7 September in time for the official presentation of the New Tagtool for iPad app. It was great to meet up with the OMAi crew as  it’s been a while since we were all together. Then YaguArt and I had a chance to draw with the new app on the balcony of the auditorium, which was nice (but unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this). Later that evening we all went off to the PostCity Ars Electronica venue with our Tagtools, projectors and the generator and did some collective projector bombing on the huge poster that was on the facade of a building at the entrance. This was fun – and attracted a lot of interest from passers by! On Friday OMAi’s all day Tagtool Animation Lab opened at the Ars Electronica exhibition at PostCity. This ‘playground’ for visitors occupied a long section of wall on the first floor of this extraordinary cavernous multi-storey former mail sorting office. There were two iPad workstations for multiplayer sessions and I joined in with a third projector and ‘old-school’ Tagtool.  The photo below shows Maki, Seppi and Itzi’s animation (left and centre) with my ‘old-school’ drawing on the left.    As well as this long wall there was a micromapping station constructed from white Lego bricks and in the photo below YaguArt is at the Tagtool controls.The lab was open from 10 am till 7 pm and all day long there were lots of visitors. In the morning Seppi showed me some of the animation possibilities of the New Tagtool then I spent the rest of the day drawing, first practising some animation on my new iPad Pro then joining in the playground mural with my ‘old-school’ Tagtool.My projector was sitting on the table next to my Wacom drawing tablet and Tagtool mini (a totally old-school set up!) while the other two projectors for iPad drawing were ceiling mounted, but this produced some interesting extra effects when people passed by….In the two photos above Seppi and Maki are showing some children how to animate using the iPad – and as usual they all loved drawing and making the images move!It was fun trying to ‘match’ the old-school Tagtool drawing with the New Tagtool for iPad – as in this photo above where Maki is ‘wearing’ some of my Tagtool drawing on his sweatshirt, here is a different kind of animation! 

It was a very long and intensive day of drawing and we were all quite tired by 7 pm when we had to pack up the equipment and shut down the projectors. But it had been great fun and so nice to see so many people enjoying ‘having a go’ with the New Tagtool app. I was also happy to have this opportunity to draw with the Tagtool crew (it’s been a long time since we had a session like this together) – and also YaguArt, whose work I had seen and liked on the Tagtool facebook site but only met in person for the first time.  The Tagtool Animation Lab was open for the whole of the festival but sadly we had to leave to go to draw at another festival  in the Czech Republic the following day.