Drawinglive News

On the last night of the festival K.U.N.T.Z. presented a different programme entitled ‘The Golden Kuntry’, with guest violinist Michael Makarov. To set the scene I drew a landscape with cowboys in silhouette behind the musicians, and then developed a succession of images on Western themes in parallel with the music rather than making a separate drawing for each song.





I made this selection of images from photos taken by Dima and Stefanie – when I am doing this kind of continuous sequential Tagtool drawing performance there is no time for me to stop for a minute to take any photos myself! To end this post here’s a shot of Jan at the drums with my drawing of a cowboy behind him…..

Although K.U.N.T.Z. have presented the song cycle ‘Hexentiere’ in different venues in Vienna, Berlin and Prague, the beautiful dome tent, pictured below, of the ‘Drama’ stage at Festival HISTeRIA provided an ideal space for us to show in performance the multi-dimensional aspect of the piece for the first time.With Jan on drums and David delivering vocals, mimicking both the sounds and movements of the seven animals, I developed a Tagtool drawing for each one, morphing each scene into the next while the masked dancers performed in front of the stage. Their movements sometimes were captured as shadows within the drawing which produced a most interesting fusion of the ‘real’ and old-school Tagtool drawn imagery. Although I had made the donkey and wolf masks and the crow on the stand initially as props for promotional material for the band, being able to include these in the show was a real bonus – so, very many thanks must go to the dancers from the festival who performed with us! The photos below, which were taken my friend Stefanie, show well this multi-dimensional aspect of the piece. Music, dance and Tagtool drawing – I think this is a really exciting and interesting combination for live performances!




In my next posting there will be photos from K.U.N.T.Z. ‘Golden Kuntry’ show on the last day of the festival – and Dima is now preparing some video for the blog too…..

On all three nights of the festival K.U.N.T.Z. gave performances featuring Tagtool drawings projected onto the interior of the big dome tent ‘Drama’.On Friday and Saturday nights the programme was ‘Hexentiere’ – a song cycle for seven of the animals associated with witchcraft and, as can be seen in the photo below, in these performances we asked some of the dancers at the festival also to join in the action wearing the donkey and wolf masks we brought with us.On Saturday K.U.N.T.Z. sang a different programme, ‘The Golden Kuntry’, and this time the band was joined by a special guest, the violinist Michael Makarov.Our friends attending the festival took lots of photos and video for us which was really great – but now I have so many pictures to sort through that it will take a few days before I can make a selection to post on the blog…..

More Festival HISTeRIA postings will be coming soon!

This week we are in the beautiful Istrian area of Slovenia.  From 18 to 20 July we will be taking part in the Etno HISTeRIA Festival at Gračišče but last night we were in Koper doing Tagtool drawing at the big concert given by the Mednarodni Orkester Etno Histria in Titov trg, Koper’s beautiful and historic main square.The orchestra, composed of young musicians from all over the world, gave a superb performance and it was a real joy to be part of this really great event!In the afternoon we set up our workstation to project on the clock tower. We chose this location as the tower has an interesting textured brick surface and was situated on the opposite side of the square from where the orchestra would play.In the evening, as the audience gathered in the square, the orchestra made a very dramatic entrance, walking in procession singing and playing their instruments, and were accompanied by dancers, acrobats and stilt walkers.The square is floodlit at night, so we knew in advance that ambient light would be a problem. To overcome this difficulty Dima had planned to use his new triple projector solution in order to give a brighter image for my Tagtool drawings but there was a problem with the electricity supply in the square and at the last minute we had to work off a generator, so we had to use our single short throw projector instead. This gave quite a good image, but not quite as bright as we had planned – a pity, as the tower was a really great surface for projection.
Below are some photos that I took with my little camera during the evening.




This concert was really special! It was a real privilege to be able to take part – and tomorrow we travel to Ljubljana to perform with the orchestra again before returning to Gračišče to prepare for the HISTeRIA Festival in the forest.

I took the photos below directly from the TV screen of some of the test drawings that I have done in the last few days using Dima’s new drawing programme. Photographed like this they just look out of focus of course! But I quite like the effect that is obtained by viewing the image without wearing 3D glasses and there is no doubt that drawing in 3D with the glasses on is quite an extraordinary experience. It really feels like a whole new world to explore….A first ‘proof of concept’ drawing. The drawing is enabled in 3 separate ‘layers’.Above – viewed through 3D glasses the figure in the foreground really appeared to be standing in the room in front of the TV – very spooky!The image above has 5 drawing layers, 2 for the rooftops and 3 for the interior.Above there are 6 layers of drawing, with each head drawn on a separate layer. Seen through the 3D glasses they looked like a set of cardboard cut outs arranged in space – but I really only did this drawing to test the drawing line.Above – a quick 5 layer sketch…..
Now Dima has added a grey scale to the programme to enable me to do this kind of tonal painting. The image above has 7 layers and the 3D effect is more subtle.

If you have red/cyan anaglyph glasses please put them on now – and you should be able to see some of these drawing experiments in REAL 3D….

In his quest to develop a tool that will enable me to draw in stereoscopic 3D, Dima is now almost permanently glued to the computer and has has moved his workstation from the studio into our sitting-room. Needless to say, the dogs are profoundly unimpressed with this new arrangement…..
Now I am confined to my desk in the corner of the room and from time to time Dima asks me to ‘try to do a drawing’ on the TV monitor. I’ve been taking photos of some of these drawings – with the application being so full of bugs, both ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ that the process of drawing has gone from difficult, through simply weird to completely impossible!
The 3D bit was working really well in the beginning (this can’t be seen in the photo below of course!) but the drawing line went all over the place making anything other than abstract patterns virtually impossible to control.
So – deep gloom, then Dima started all over again to try to achieve a line that I would be able to control accurately…..
This version was great fun, but everything turned into pointillism – and then after some more tinkering, into something really strange……
……finally, Dima ended up with these really sinister worms (Unfortunately a photo doesn’t show them properly. I should have taken some video as they seemed to move and wriggle as they gradually faded and disappeared).
So – deep gloom again, and another new start……which this time, though full of bugs both ‘known’and ‘unknown’, I thought looked much more promising! But – the pen had no pressure sensitivity and if I lifted it up to make a mark in a different position on the drawing the two points automatically joined up so it was only possible to draw using a continuous line.
So – Dima’s programme still may be full of bugs both ‘known and unknown’, but at least he has got it to the stage where I am able to use it to draw….
Now he is working trying to fix the ‘known bugs’ – but I have a terrible feeling that there will be lots more ‘unknown’ ones lurking ready to pounce, destroying everything and sending him back into deep gloom again…..

Last weekend we stayed at Hotel Luční bouda, the highest mountain hotel in the Krkonoše (the Giant Mountains) – the unbelievably romantic setting for the wedding of our friends, Martin and Alice. We took the Tagtool with us of course! I did the test drawing below on Friday, after we set up the projectors and Tagtool in the corner of the room where the party was to be held on Saturday evening.With several DJs and VJs among the guests, there was a lot of equipment to set up – and some creative solutions were required to get everything powered and working, as can be seen in the photo below. (Note the hotel waste basket which found a new use as a wire projector ‘cage’ suspended from the ceiling lamp!)
Here are some photos of the drawings I made during the evening at the party.


Dima animated the drawing (above) to accompany the dancing and the photo below is the mountain landscape that I drew towards the end of the party.

We had a wonderful time at Alice and Mikulas’s wedding – it was a really joyful occasion and although the Krkonoše mountains were covered in a blanket of thick mist and rain for the whole of the weekend and it was impossible to see the summit of Sněžka from the hotel, we felt that we had had a proper holiday!

Discjockey Miki hosted the second part of this event. His exciting and eclectic mix of discs, some instrumental, some vocal and in both Czech and English, was great for both the dancing and Tagtooling that continued till the early hours!As well as building up large still images like the ones above, Dima took up the gamepad and we did some animation sequences. Although we didn’t take any video during the evening, I think that the stills below show something of this animation (first ‘dancing skeletons’ and then some fast moving abstractions) Then – a change of tempo and time for some more figurative drawing……


Throughout the evening both Dima and I took lots of photos – far too many for the blog! I have put them all in a web album and I will end this posting with a selection of images from my final drawing sequence of the night.

The venue for this evening of poetry and prose readings organised by the fortnightly literary magazine ‘Tvar’ was the Bubeneč Station Restaurant in Prague which, although quite small, had a nice big wall and a high ceiling that was great for our Tagtool set up. The programme shows the names of all the contributors to the readings that made up the first half of the evening; the second part was an ‘after party’ hosted by our friend Discjockey Miki who had invited us to do the visuals during the evening. As all the readings were in Czech and as I didn’t have an opportunity to find out beforehand about their subject matter, it was a real challenge for me to provide appropriate accompanying live visuals – in order to decide what to draw I had to rely on listening to the intonation of the readers’ voices and trying to catch the odd word that I recognised!
This is a selection of the images that I drew during the readings.




The large and attentive audience filled to overflowing the small room of the restaurant. Then, following a short break for refreshments, the chairs were moved away to make a space for dancing at Discjockey Miki’s ‘after party’.
I continued drawing, Dima did some Tagtool animation and we took lots more photos of the dancing and partying – but I will save these for my next posting!

Last Friday K.U.N.T.Z. performed the song cycle ‘Hexentiere’ at the Trafo Gallery in Prague – 7 songs representing animals associated with witchcraft.
Because this former power station where the Exhofluxx Festival was held has a very high ceiling, I was able to have a very much larger drawing area than was possible when we performed this work at mo.ë in Vienna. I had my Tagtool set up on the balcony opposite the stage from where I had a clear, unobstructed view of the whole hall and stage – great for drawing! Dima set up two cameras to video the performance, one on the balcony to focus on my drawing and the other downstairs in the hall to provide close ups of Jan and David playing. Unfortunately the battery in the camera on the balcony failed so although we have footage of the musicians, there are no shots of my drawings.



There is not much of my drawing of the animals to be seen in these screenshots of Jan and David but Dan Senn, the organiser of the festival, videoed all of the performances at the festival so perhaps I will be able to post some more images from this event later.