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Friday began with a presentation by Markus and Josef reviewing OMA International’s Tagtool work over the past year. First they showed video of one of the completed episodes their Hilti animation to show the possibilities of  ‘digital puppeteering’ using the Tagtool, followed by a short video made by a group of immigrant children.  This was a project from Josef’s work with youth groups.As an illustration of  the use of the Tagtool in  festivals and  other outdoor events Markus showed a  video clip from one of the jam sessions at the Illuminating York festival. In conclusion they presented their current thoughts about possible development of the Tagtool.  It was then time for the company to divide into the two ‘chink ‘and ‘chank’ groups.  Matthias was leading the Tagtool building group. As the photos above  show, they quickly started on the task of soldering and putting together their Tagtools. While they were busy with their soldering and assembling, the other group was discussing various aspects of the Nodekit with Gernot, the programmer who has been working on the development of the latest version of this software.   The photo above shows them looking at the present version of the Nodekit and discussing various ideas for improving some of its functions.   This was all extremely interesting for Dima but, needless to say, I found it very difficult to understand!    Instead,  (with the expert help and guidance of Svetli, who proved a most patient and helpful teacher) I took the opportunity during this session to find out how to use the Wiki on the Tagtool website.  I made a little posting on how to make ‘ghosts’ in the Tagtool Use,  ‘Styles and Tricks ‘ section and plan to do some more postings once we get back home.Before the evening  jams and performances at the Kunstwerkstatt we returned to Gunter’s ‘courtyard kitchen’ at Wassergasse where he served up a delicious dinner which we ate by the light of the campfire – this was really THE perfect conclusion to the day’s discussions! The open session that began the evening Tagtooling was extremely lively and by the time that the artists’  performances began a large and enthusiastic audience had gathered.   I took lots of photos of Maki and Iink’s session –  here is just a small selection from what was a very accomplished and varied performance.Later, when Dieter and I started to draw, I gave my camera to Dima to take some photos of our work.It was great to jam with Dieter and Supraplus, the group who provided the live music for our performance – and the two Tagtools and four projectors gave us an enormous  ‘canvas’  to work on.  In the foreground of the photos is Dieter’s paper sculpture ‘Cell City’  – an exciting three dimensional element casting shadows and illuminating the foreground of our drawing.

On Thursday evening the Chink Chank was scheduled to begin  – and despite the volcanic ash that had grounded  flights for several days across must of Europe, nearly everyone had managed to find a way to get to Tulln on time, including Kellie,  who had travelled from Australia specially for this event.   In the evening most of the company went into Vienna to the Tagtool performance at Garage X.It was a very nice opening event and as the photos above show, Markus and Matthias introduced some new characters as well as Hilti, Capitain and The President.
Back at Tulln after the show.we found that Dima had got all four projectors connected so we had another go at drawing (and a few drinks at the bar!) before bedtime.

We arrived at Gneixendorf  in brilliant sunshine, had an excellent lunch at the village restaurant and arrived at the ‘Beethoven Barn’ as arranged at 3pm.  This ‘barn’ turned out to be a  most beautifully proportioned  Baroque building set in a wide open park adjacent to the manor house at the edge of the village.  The present owner of the land and buildings had arrived to unlock the gates for us to drive our vehicles up to the building.  As you can see I took lots of photos but they cannot adequately convey the extraordinary tranquility and decayed beauty of this very special place.The interior of the barn was, if anything, even more spectacular than the exterior. The ground floor has one section double height with a lower vaulted section at one end.This photo shows Dima setting up the Tagtool equipment on the first floor where Dieter’s intricate web of black and white painting covers the whole of the floor, columns and vaulted ceiling of the floor above – a truly virtuoso piece, even more spectacular in ‘real life’ than in the videos on his website!  Dieter had invited the dancer Bea Schrader and drummer Florian Tuchanek to work with us and Sebastian, Joost and Dima would make the video documentation of all the sessions.   To begin with we worked on the ground floor – this is a photo of the equipment test.   I am not able to post any video clips of the day’s performances until we get home and Dima has time to do the editing.  When I was having a short break from drawing I took a few photos for the blog with my little camera but sadly I found I had taken no photos of Bea’s dancing, which is a great pity.   After the first session we all moved upstairs and continued to draw until 9pm when it was time to load up the vans in the darkness and drive back to Tulln.  I was so happy to have this opportunity to draw with Dieter again – and the dramatic addition of  Florian’s drumming and Bea’s dance movements set against the backdrop of Dieter’s monochrome mural paintings all contributed to making this visit to Gneixendorf a truly memorable event.

After supper in Tulln we found that preparations for the Chink Chank were well underway and the double projection was already installed so we took the opportunity to have a little ‘unofficial’ jam session – this time on the plain flat white wall of the Kunstwerkstatt.  As these photos show it is a really big area on which to draw – I’m looking forward to seeing the artists’ performances at the Chink Chank over the next few days. It was well after midnight before we turned off the projectors!

For the next five days we are in Austria, staying at Tulln, the ‘home’ of the Tagtool.  Today we are visiting Gneixendorf, near Krems to do some drawing and filming with Dieter Puntigam in a location in which he has already been working.  Click here for the link to his site.

Tomorrow evening the Tagtool Chink Chank begins in the Kunstwerkstadt, Tulln and the rest of our visit to Austria will be filled with drawing, talking, discussing, and planning all things Tagtool (and also, no doubt, some partying as well!).  At this event there will also be workshop sessions where participants will be able to build their very own Tagtool.  The link above gives all the details.

I will try to take photos and do a posting for each day of our visit – but now it is time to load up the van, drive to Gneixendorf and prepare for our first Tagtool session.

Last week we were in Berlin for a couple of days – a flying visit in the van to collect a Steenbeck for our film activities and also an opportunity to do a Tagtool session at our friend Schmacke’s place.  Some people had seen our performance at the party there last year (when I was drawing over  Super 8 found film footage) but this impromptu session was a bit different as we had only the Tagtool with us this time.  To show people who arrived at the party early the range of mark-making possibilites of the Tagtool, I began by making a lot of different coloured squiggles, lines and shapes for Dima to animate and then some people who were interested ‘had a go’ at drawing.  Unfortunately when we got home I discovered that for some reason my computer hadn’t captured most of our performance, only this short clip – in it I am drawing and Dima is doing the animation.

The sound track is Canto Hondo 2 by Moondog Jr.

The combined efforts of Joerg, Seppy and Dima the weekend of my birthday party have resulted in many hours of video – a mammoth task for Dima to sort through and edit! On the Saturday the party started at 7pm and went on till very late…. so for starters, here is one of the highlights of that evening, the impromptu dance performance given by Elisabeth. You can find the video of the whole performance on Vimeo but for the blog here are some stills that I think capture very well this exciting combination of Dance and Tagtool drawing.Jan, Seppy and Dima provided the musical accompaniment.Here is a video clip of the second half of Elisabeth’s performance.

The virtuoso Tagtool drawing is by Die. Puntigam!

As I promised in my last posting, here is a clip of part of our Sunday evening jam session.   In it I’m drawing with Die. Puntigam and the soundtrack is from the album ‘Drinking Songs’ by Matt Elliott (very appropriate….!)

Dima took this with my little Canon Ixus 100IS  but I think, for such a small camera, that the quality of the recording is really excellent.  As it will be a while before Dima has all the footage from the big cameras edited and ready to upload I thought I’d post this as a ‘taster’ now.  
I had drawn with Die. Puntigam in some of the artists’ jam sessions in York last year and I was so pleased to have this opportunity to draw with him again.  Now I’m really looking forward to our next sessions in Austria!

Lst Saturday was my birthday – what better excuse to have a big Tagtooling weekend!Our Tagtool friends from Austria arrived on Friday and the party began right away with drinks in the kitchen and then after dinner everyone went into the studio to set up the equipment.It required the combined efforts of Matthias, Seppy, Joerg and Dima to get the visitors’ extra projectors, different video cameras and Tagtools to all work together but quite soon they had everything set up and ready to go – and as this photo shows, it all looked very impressive.

(Die. Puntigam on Tagtool)

For the first jam session they had the projectors focussed on one wall only behind our new performance corner but on Sunday they were able to reorganise the set up to have all four projectors and two Tagtools working so that it was possible for two people to draw together across both walls – a really huge and exciting projection area!   Here are a few photos that I took with my little camera.(Matthias on Tagtool, Dima on Guitar)Jan and Matthias on TagtoolsDie. Puntigam and Frances on TagtoolsOn Saturday I didn’t take any photos but instead spent all my time either drawing or partying (especially  partying!!)….so most of the pictures above are from our Sunday jamming – when we continued drawing intensively until well after midnight!  Matthias, Jan, Seppy, Die. Puntigam and I all drew and in my next posting I will have the video clips that Dima is putting together from the material that he, Joerg and Seppy recorded during the weekend.  When a group of people get together to draw like this it is always a lot of fun – but it is also a very interesting and illuminating experience.   You discover such a lot, not only about how other people go about drawing, but I find that when I draw with someone else I learn new things about how I draw as well.   All too soon it was time to pack up the Tagtools and head for home – but we will all meet up next month at the Chink Chank in Tulln  –  and that will be another great collective drawing opportunity!

This is the first time that we have used our new Tagtool set up and performance corner so I thought I’d post this video of part of the rehearsal (It ends abruptly because Dima had forgotten to switch off his mobile and it went off suddenly!)

The two projectors and the Dualhead2go give a huge drawing area – which is great! The only limitation (which I think is quite interesting and no bad thing to have to work with) is that at the moment Dima has the Tagtool set up in such a way that when you draw on the Wacom pad there are 3 overlapping screens to make up the whole image (ie if you want to draw on the left side of the picture you have to press ‘1’ on the computer, ‘2’ gives you the central area and ‘3’ the right side). This means that it is not possible to make a continuous pen stroke across the whole drawing area from side to side (but of course vertical strokes are fine) and I still have to get used to clicking the screen number on the computer quickly when I want to change the area I’m drawing on as well as operating the Tagtool – but it’s not much of a problem really.
We are having a big Tagtool crew here next weekend – so I’m hoping to be able to post some mega-jam sessions using our new set up quite soon!

I didn’t post any entries on the blog in February so this is something of  a ‘catch up’ posting.   Over the last few weeks I have been doing some Tagtool drawing in the studio as a ‘background’ for Dima to play guitar.  Here are a couple of photos from these sessions.
Sometimes I tried to ‘follow’ Dima’s playing by building up a variety of patterns and textures, but I also made some of my usual figurative and landscape work too. Although the projection area was quite large, directing the beam from floor level meant that a lot of the lower part of the drawing area was obscured by Dima and all his equipment. Directing the projection higher up the wall just didn’t work very well so to solve this problem we decided to completely reorganise the studio!
We have now built (using old pallets) a slightly raised area in one corner of the studio for the Tagtool set-up and another, larger, built up performance area (also from old pallets and other scrap materials) in the opposite corner. We bought a second (matching) BenQ projector and with our Dualhead2go we are now able to cover the walls behind the whole of the new performance corner. Dima made two wooden trays to hold the projectors, which he has mounted on two heavy tripods. We are very excited about this new arrangement – so here are a few photos showing the building and testing process.The construction of the raised area for the Tagtool workstation.Building the performance area.Testing the projectors – all systems working and ready to go!