Saturday :: 1.10.2011 :: 17.00 – 24.00

Talktime :: 17.00 – 19.00
presentations, instalations and demos by ToolKid (SK), StiX (SK) and Tagtool (AT)

SHOWTIME :: 20.00 – 24.00 :: live performances by
Tagtool (AT)
Beata Spáčilová & KRRAAKKK (CZ)
gnd & zeleny antoin(SK)
chaosdroid (RO/SK) & ::.: (SK)

Earlier this year we had the opportunity to collaborate with Maja Osojnik on a number of projects.

With styles ranging from classical and early folk to chanson, punk, noise, jazz, and experimental music, Maja Osojnik and her Band have given European audiences dynamic and dramaturgically elaborate live performances. They have created a new kind of original music which defies definition: Their mixture of musical genres comes alive in their live performances in a harmonized and spontaneous way.

MAJA OSOJNIK | text, conzept, composition, voice
MICHAEL BRUCKNER-WEINHUBER | guitar
CLEMENS WENGER | akkordeon
PHILIP JAGSCHITZ | piano
BERND SATZINGER | bass
MATTHIAS KOCH | drums
MARKUS DORNINGER | animation & live-drawing
MATTHIAS FRITZ | animation & live-drawing
MARKUS KUSCHER | skirt design

Much praised for the technically versatile 2010 album, Črne Vode (Black Waters), Maja Osojnik arranges and composes songs whose contents touch on existential themes and include social critiques of war, greed, and selfishness. They focus on life stories integrating fate, happiness, love, and death. Osojnik’s original approach to folklore, especially with regard to the interpretation of Slovenian music and the chansons of Fran Milčinski, enables a familiar, dusty tradition to come alive in a modern guise. In her bold cover of the partisan song, “Počiva Jezero V Tihoti,” for instance, it is not a girl waiting in vain for the partisan, but his boyfriend.

Backed by her Austrian band, Osojnik’s album, Črne Vode, displays her skill of weaving diverse musical styles into a complex and inspiring whole. The album, which received the 2010 German Record Critics’ Award, is an intercultural effort: it was recorded in Austria and the lyrics are predominantly in Slovene. However, Osojnik always translates the texts for her Austrian bandmates, who thus manage to grasp the songs’ nuances and dramatic turns. This awareness is audible on the record and becomes tangible in live performances. Osojnik occasionally slows a song down or interrupts it, which the musicians use to create peculiar miniature songs within the songs, evoking jazz, art rock, and minimalism. All of these interventions complement Osojnik’s lyrics, which are inhabited by bums, immigrants, outsiders, losers, the unloved, and the forgotten.

„Maja Osojnik is an eccentric with a priceless sense of humor, who undoubtedly comes from a different point of view than traditional conservative folk song preservation. With her shrill appearance but deep alto voice, she interprets Slovenian folk songs – sometimes with respectful tenderness, sometimes by means of total re-composition…” – Richard Schubert, Balkan Fever Festival

“Bienenkino” is improvised live animation, music and narration for kids. The ensemble is part of Tetete, a group of artists aiming to provide quality off-mainstream children’s entertainment.

Philharmonie Luxemburg, December 4th, 3pm.

Christian Reiner – Stimme
Philip Zoubek – Klavier
Mathias Koch – Schlagzeug
Maki Dorninger – Zeichnung
Mathias Fritz – Animation
Special Guest: Ritsche Koch – Trumpet

Release notes

Version 0.7.6.1

Features added:

• Space bar scrolling: While pressing the space bar, click and hold
  the left mouse button in an empty area in the patch. You can now move
  the mouse and scroll your way through the patch. Works like the “hand
  tool” in various graphics applications.
• Automatic tablet mapping: The display is automatically fitted to the
  current tablet and screen resolutions, so that you can always draw on
  the entire screen.
• New screenshot mechanism: Screenshots are now always the size of the
  display screen. The currently drawn shape (which hasn’t been released
  yet) is also included in the screenshot. The star-shaped drawing
  cursor can be included if you wish. The screenshots are also already
  anti-aliased.
• Image loading: Press left + 1, 2, 3 or 4 on the gamepad to load an
  image into the scene. The default directory they are loaded from is
  called “Images” and is located in your Nodekit installation directory. You need to enable Image loading with a drop-down menu in the Tagtool patch (look for the comment box).
• Added Tagtool MIDI patch – you can find it in the “save” directory of the Nodekit installation.
• The antialiasing level can now be configured with the following command line option:
  -antialiasing:LEVEL

Changes and bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug that moved nodes 20 pixels to the bottom-right every
  time a patch was saved
• Changed the Arduino drivers (now using the D2XX drivers). This fixes
  communication problems which happened occasionally. The Arduino node
  button state now is true when you press the release button, and false
  otherwise.
• Changed the amount of configurable MIDI devices
• Comparator node now outputs boolean values
• Arduino node has been renamed “TagtoolController” and has drop-down
  menu for switching between 5-slider and 6-slider Tagtools
• Using a new installer and changed the install location of the patch files. They are now found in MyDocuments\Nodekit\patches. This should fix install issues on Windows Vista and Windows 7 that prevented Nodekit from starting properly.

Tagtool patch changes:

• Replaced the old camera node set-up with the new TagtoolCamera node
• Replaced the old screenshot node set-up with the new Screenshot node
• Added the image loading node set-up
• Removed the negation of the arduino button state
• Corrected a comment in the MIDI patch

To have a look at the stunning artworks, and for contact & price information, go to his webpage and have a look in the “bundles” section.

“Bienenkino” is improvised live animation, music and narration for kids. The ensemble is part of Tetete, a group of artists aiming to provide quality off-mainstream children’s entertainment. Here’s a recording from “Bienenkino” on September 1st 2010 at Bollwerk in Moers, featuring old and new characters from the Tetete universe.

Christian Reiner – Stimme
Philip Zoubek – Klavier
Mathias Koch – Schlagzeug
Maki Dorninger – Zeichnung
Mathias Fritz – Animation

Here’s another video from the same performance, with interviews and reactions from the kids (also in German only – sorry!)

Dima Berzon has demoed Tagtooling in stereoscopic 3D with drawings by Frances Sander. This was achieved in post production, by compositing several flat layers of Tagtool painting into a 3D world. To view the clip in 3D, you need red and cyan colored glasses like this:

Frances writes about the process on their blog Drawinglive News:

For this experiment Dima asked me to do a set of three Tagtool drawings. In the first session I was to draw only the background. Then, against a green screen ‘background’ I drew only what was to appear in the middle ground. (I found this quite difficult, trying to remember my previous drawing so that I could make the middle ground look convincing when the three sessions were put together). In the third session, again against the green background, I drew only the foreground elements of the composition.

I watched a high resolution version of the clip on a large TV set, and I found the spacial effect very convincing. This definitely shows the potential of eventual 3D features for the Tagtool software.

If you don’t have the 3D glasses ready, here’s the mono version of the clip:

Gneixendorf – Session 1

Tagtool: Die.Puntigam, Frances Sander
Performance: Bea von Schrader
Drums: Florian Duchacek
Sounds: Current93

Gneixendorf – Session 2

Tagtool: Die.Puntigam, Frances Sander
Performance: Bea von Schrader
Drums: Florian Duchacek
Sounds: Sainkho Namchilake, Hans Tschiritsch

Gneixendorf – Session 3

Tagtool: Die.Puntigam, Frances Sander
Performance: Bea von Schrader
Drums: Florian Duchacek
Music: Fred Frith

She and her band is joined by iink and Maki of Wassergasse, who illustrate these stories live with the Tagtool – on her dress.

Concert starts at 8pm
Cover charge: 15€ – Admissions 10€

Location: Kunstwerkstatt Tulln | Albrechtsgasse 18 | 3430 Tulln | Austria

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Christian Reiner – voice
Philip Zoubek – piano
Mathias Koch – drums
Maki Dorninger – drawing
Mathias Fritz – animation

Die Sache mit dem Maulwurf – Teil 1
(The Story with the Mole – Part 1)

A bee by the name of Seppi encounters a talking tree in the garden. Their conversation is interrupted by a grumpy nameless mole – it drops a bone and disappears. Puzzled, Seppi goes underground to investigate, and finds the remains of Horst, the skeleton clown. Horst has long given up circus life in favour of making movies. He was lured below earth by the mole, who claimed to be a famous director but then abandoned the movie. In the underground caverns, watched by the stones, Seppi further discovers that the mole has trapped Jean-Paul, the rocket. He manages to free him, and together they wonder – why is the mole causing all this trouble?

Die Sache mit dem Maulwurf – Teil 2
(The Story with the Mole – Part 2)

Seppi finds Barbara, who is usually inseparable from Jean-Paul, but got away when he was trapped, hiding under a cup. Meanwhile the mole decides to cut the talking tree’s roots, which are disturbing him. One of the roots confronts him, and together with Seppi it can convince the troublemaker to stop his senseless hooliganism. They realise loneliness is the reason of the moles behaviour – their friendship is the cure. Finally he agrees to go ahead with shooting the movie – featuring Horst, Seppi, Jean-Paul, Barbara and the root.

Tanz das Krokodil
(Do the Crocodile Dance)

A kid in the audience asks for “Kasperl”… the German equivalent of Punch & Judy. In fact, he wants “a beautiful Kasperl”… an that’s what he gets. Kasperl’s traditional sidekick, the Crocodile, is less esthetically pleasing. But it dresses up all lovely, and together they dance till late at night.