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The videos made by O.M.A. International of Artists’ Performances and Jam Sessions at the York Festival are now on Vimeo. Here is the video of the performance that we gave on Wednesday 28 October.

Here is a link to the Vimeo Album that has all the videos of the Wall of Light Artists’ Performances and the Jam Sessions. I think that this collection of videos demonstrates much better than any words of mine, just what an exciting and versatile instrument the Tagtool is.

We had a great time in York, it was a most rewarding experience and we learned such a lot by watching the different artists’ performances and working together in the Jam Sessions. So – a big thank you to the organisers of the Festival, a big thank you to GaiaNova for the beautiful super bright projector and a big thank you to O.M.A. International for inviting us to participate!

On Sunday morning the weather changed – there was torrential rain and a high wind that blew all day but miraculously by 6pm, although it was much colder than before and still rather windy, the rain had stopped. Although the weather had kept some families away there was no shortage of people wanting to draw in the public sessions. More people gathered for Iink and Maki’s performance but as there were not the crowds of the previous evening, this time I managed to take lots of photos. I noticed there were people in the audience setting up their cameras and tripods who had been at the Saturday performance too and they were rewarded on this last evening with a delightful and colourful animated sequence of fairytale images including this amazing pink sea monster and mermaid. A very nice finale!

Then it was time to carefully lower the beautiful projector into its box, dismantle the tower and clear everything away. The next morning the only thing that remained to show where the projector tower had been was a pale green square in the grass.

On Friday evening the featured artist was Die. Puntigam. A large crowd had gathered for his performance – and they were not disappointed! I took lots of photos. Here is a selection. They are not able of course to convey the amazing speed of his drawing or the rapid succession of images that continuously poured over the tower, then swirled away to be immediately overlaid or replaced. For this solo he was working with two Tagtools and simultaneous double animation – a high octane virtuoso performance that drew deservedly loud applause from the audience.

On Saturday evening Iink and Maki gave the first of their two weekend performances. I was on crowd control duty – which turned out to be a full time job so I was unable to take any photos of their work at all! There were so many spectators, and everyone wanted to have a clear view of the tower or take photos of the artists at work. It was extremely difficult for us to maintain even a narrow line of sight for the artists. Somehow they managed to see to draw through the ever narrowing gap in the delighted crowds (many of whom, both adults as well as children) were in full Halloween party mood – there were lots of pointy witches’ hats, luminous collars and scary made-up faces in the crowd! I’m really looking forward to watching the videos of these performances – once they are all on the Tagtool website I’ll post a link for Drawinglive News readers.

I’ve failed (again!) to carry out my intention to do a posting every day about the Tagtool performances on the Multangular Tower, so this is another ‘catch up’ posting. Now I have taken so many photos that it is really difficult to select just a few for this blog. Every evening has been different, but one thing has been a constant – the expressions of pure joy and delight on the faces of all the children, and their parents, who have ‘had a go’ at drawing with the Tagtool. One parent, on discovering that the festival ended on Sunday said to me, ‘What a shame! I think they should have kept the Wall of Light until Christmas.’ All the public sessions have attracted long queues, with people who didn’t manage to ‘have a go’ coming back early the next evening, or waiting for the late evening public session. I have taken so many photos – but here are some of my favourites.

It’s Friday night – only three more evenings of projections before we pack up and go home. It has been a very busy and exciting week. With so many things to think and write about it has been very difficult for me to post a summary of each day’s events. As well as the ‘official’ documentation by Jorg and Josef there must have been hundreds of photos taken every night by members of the audience, some by people with very high quality photographic equipment, but I decided that for my blog I would use only photos I had taken myself. This has meant that I have no photos of the parts of the Tagtool Artists Jam Sessions where I have been drawing, or of our performance on Wednesday evening. In the Jam Sessions, as well as having great fun, I have found it extremely interesting to watch how different people develop their drawings and interact with each other. Here is one sequence of photos that I took when I was waiting my turn to draw. Maki and Iink are doing both drawing and animation together.

The public session as usual attracted crowds of families, the children all eager to draw or see their name written in light on the tower. Then the local group Upfaders set up their turntables next to the projection tent. They attracted a large and enthusiastic audience who clearly enjoyed the visual spectacle as well as the music. Many of the young people who had come specially to see Upfaders stayed on for the Artist Performance. Everyone enjoyed Tohyto’s quirky and whimsical line drawings. Unfortunately my photos, as usual, are rather dark but all the Artist’s Performances will appear soon on video and I will put a link to these in a later posting.

Ben, Matthias, Josef and I met with First Year Product Design students who were going to use the Tagtool in a project to draw on selected buildings in the city later in the week. Ben showed how GaiaNova had used the Tagtool in some of their company’s projects and Josef and Matthias outlined the work of O.M.A. International in developing the Tagtool. They also showed some footage of the latest instalment of their animation – which the students obviously enjoyed very much! The students then had an opportunity to try out the Tagtool for themselves, both drawing and animating using the gamepad. At the end of the day there was no shortage of volunteers wanting to participate in the evening project.

On Tuesday evening it was the turn of the Third Year Fine Art students to provide the artist session at the Multangular Tower. They had prepared their programme of short pieces working singly or in pairs, drawing and animating. The first two students drew only in white to accompany a live narration. The others used music soundtracks to accompany their drawing and animation. The finale was a free improvisation in brilliant colour to accompany a live performance on bassoon.

My good intentions of posting every day have not been realised!  We have been so busy during the day and in the evening I have been too tired to do a posting. I will try to catch up tomorrow – meantime here is a quick account of what we have been doing. On Monday we spent the whole day at York St John’s University and went straight from there to the Wall of Light session in the evening. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent preparing for our special performance on Wednesday evening.  Thursday morning was so bright and sunny that we decided to give ourselves some time off and walk through the city centre to the river, which was great, but then it was time to pack up everything and head for the Wall of Light again.  Now posting photos will have to wait till tomorrow!  There is no doubt that this event is a great success – every evening there have been big and enthusiastic audiences and in the public sessions the queues have been so long that each time we have had to ask  people to come back later.  So – it has all been very tiring , but most enjoyable!

Children from Hempland Primary School provided the first session of the evening. They had had an opportunity to try out the Tagtool at school as part of the Illuminating York Project and were obviously eager to show off to their parents their Tagtool drawing skills.  Some children wrote their names or sent messages – ‘I love Mummy’ was very popular, while others drew people or their pets.  Some of the littlest ones scribbled furiously, covering the tower in a kaleidescope of vibrant colours Marcus, Matthias and Martin were on hand to animate their drawings. When they saw their work spinning round, and zooming out and in on the surface of the tower this caused a great deal of excitement.
Children who were not drawing jumped and ran towards the base of the tower, chasing the moving drawings and trying to cover themselves in the coloured light. Soon there was a long queue of families waiting for the Public Session to begin.
It looks like this is becoming one of the ‘must do ‘ half-term activities for local children and, while some parents managed to do a little drawing under the guise of ‘helping’, I discovered only this one adult drawing amongst the large number of photos I took during the evening.Many of the families with young children had gone home by the time the Artists’ Jam Session started, but they were replaced by a new, mainly adult audience. I took these photos before I joined in the session. Back at the house Josef prepared something for us to eat while Jorg, Matthias and Marcus reviewed the results of the evening’s time lapse photography. It was the end of another long, but successful day!

Luca’s stunning calligraphy opened the evening’s performance and a big audience had gathered to watch. Some keen photographers arrived early, secured front row positions and set up their tripods while others were holding up their mobile phones and cameras to capture the spectacle. Jorg was videoing and taking photographs for us and the time lapse camera was installed in the tower. I recognised some of the faces in the crowd from the previous evening and, sure enough, when the Open Session was announced a large queue gathered immediately, mostly families including some with very young children, all eager to try the Tagtool. Ben controlled the queue with his big clock, strictly five minutes of drawing each! Everyone was very excited and as the photos show, the children, and their parents, were loving every minute of it – so much so that the artists’ jam session started late. It was all very hectic! By this time we were all quite tired and t was a great treat to return home to find a lovely hot dinner cooked for us all – a big thank you Mandy!