4shrooms

Yes, it’s true! 4shrooms stormed Merano, italy South Tyrol for most of August 2009!

1st up, we did a gig with a rock/jazz band Fatish Trio. More photos to follow, but for now there is this montage by Damian, the photographer on the scene:

We also tried to do a support for the rock concert in the middle, helped by our CAcert friends, Andreas and Ernestine, but the conditions just didn’t match. Unlike last year, our projectors were weak, it rained, and the stage was a long long way away. Well, it was fun.

3rdly and pretty darn successfully: Georg and Andi joined Jan-mit-Doris, the great big grand stage, and DJ Mam. It was rather good for only 4 people. Yeah, the lights kept on going out … but that’s what happens when all 4 shroomies suck on the power cable. Also, I never saw any of the beer, and there will be a reckoning for the TWO SHROOMIES who sucked on all the beer! Photos to come…

Lux ludica 2008 video by Pablo is now available for your enjoyment, here is the smallest one:

That can be downloaded here. It’s small, only 3 megabytes, but can also download these: 9 megabytes and 23 megabytes. Enjoy!

The 4shrooms4u project has reached a mid-way point in its evolution, and a progress report is called for!

We have created 7 clips of our analogue practices. Each clip was produced with one of the shroomies as the actor/artist, and others in supporting roles. Each presents a particular technique in projection art which can be hopefully easily absorbed and advanced by the budding shroomita.

Technical details: most clips were captured with the Panasonic NV-DX1 or the Sony DCR-VX1000E.  They were shot in a 60 minutes session at Studio HollerG, and then cut them using FinalCutPro.  Pablo cutter for all.  Camera was by Pablo Naranjo, Georg and Doris. Backing soundtracks by Georg Hofman, Hermann Bühler and Doris.

In addition to this, we’ve created a single, longer presentation in video form of one performance, expressing the combination of many artists and many techniques in an unusual setting. This is by way of bringing all the elements together for the 4shrooms4u audience, and presenting a challenging target.  The performance was done at night, outside in the ampitheatre at Symposion Lindabrunn, a quarry / sculpturing retreat south of Vienna.

Work so far done was achieved primarily with funding from NetzNetz/MA7-Stadt Wien, the self-contributions of our shroomie artists, and some equipment from CastYourArt.

The next step is to take each of these clips and wrap them into a presentation layer using standard net techniques: website and DVD. Each clip deserves one page, with text of explanation and artistic merit, accompanied by technical instructions. The pages need to be collected into a cohesive system, for which we have created a new blog called 4shrooms4u.  That blog is the first attempt, as it easily lays out a page-by-page collection, and allows basic formatting and presentation.  Our current task is how to embed the video into the blog posting.  So far, it looks like all the plugins only support google or youtube video.

andi on oils, oils on tent

back from Symposion Lindabrunn and our first cut of Lux Ludica.  I’m attempting to upload some imagery, but failing dismally, it seems that TCP of greater that 80k is now banned across the english channel. Fixed, the problem was closer to me than I thought… now uploaded in large format only.  (I still have no way to create small images from the big ones.)

The story was that we converged — almost all the 4shroomies and some friends, extras and cameras — on Symposion Lindabrunn to try out our ideas for a weekend “event”.  Now that we have proven the basic idea, the work begins on making it somewhat more serious … next year!

Luckily we got some support from Angewandte who purchased a huge tent for such productions.  This arrived the day before us, so we got to put it up in its virginal near-white state.  As it was some 10m x 5m, it took up almost all of the floor space in the ampitheatro!  From the outside, it made for a very nice screen, and the inside was just too chill-out for words.

Also, we included a couple of friends, Dominic and his mate (name?) who brought along 25 slide projectors :-~ We like enthusiasm, but that’s a first!  It also caused lots of scrurrying around for extra power.  Luckily again, the Lindabrunn place has scads of power:  3 x 3 phase circuits, and we used them all.

crystal, colours, trick lens and lazy susan!

Which makes for a new record for 4shrooms:  4×16mm, 4xOHP, 5xDias and with the 15 of Dominic, we are up to 28 projectors.  A tough challenge.

Shroomies, get your photos up there…. Mine were not that grand as I was doing other things.

Thanks to Gurter, Johana, Kurt for hosting us.  Thanks to Pablo and Matthias for video support!  Next year, with a vengeance!

st9fan posted these pictures in a dark corner of the net, but to no avail, we found ‘em:

These were taken at Meran, Italy at the recent [un]defined event in parallel with Manifesta.

After much pushing and shoving, we agreed to try projecting directly on the concrete of the parade ground.

Much to our surprise, it worked! Having big meaty projectors helped a lot here, but the addiction is fatal to the budget…

In the background of this shot, the columns to the stage roof can be seen:

This was a marvel of modern engineering, it was possible to raise and lower the roof by means of 4 pully&chains and 4 motors, on each column.

No, there was no synchronisation between the motors, and one night someone futzed with it, leaving the roof tilted like a broken dollhouse. Luckily no damage done.

We have now purchased a number of slide projectors and lenses.

One projector is a Kodak Carousel to play around with and get experience.  We are more or less agreed that we will stick to Kodak Carousel types for the future, because they are heavy, high quality, as bright as it gets for slides, cheap, and getting cheaper.  We have now tried the one we purchased in real life at Meran in Italy and discovered that it still isn’t bright enough to compete with the overhead projectors.

To deal with that, two strategies:  firstly, we’ve purchased some really bright lens in the USA with bright optics:  35mm f2.5 (1st image), 220mm f2.5 (2nd).  Also, for fun, we just had to buy a really huge zoom lens: 190-330mm f3.9 (3rd).  This entire haul of lenses cost us a total of $64, which is mostly made of shipping costs in the USA. This is great buying, getting them through stores would cost us over $1000!  I’ll pick them up in November.

Secondly, we are going to look for some cheap Ektapros.  These are the professional version of the retail Carousel.  They have 1300 lumens rather than the 1000 of the Carousel.  Unfortunately, while they are expensive and valued in Europe, the US voltage ones are giveaways in the USA.  (Indeed, the 220mm lens to right came with a professional, 1300 lumens projector that only takes 110v )

If that doesn’t work, we should try the 6×6 slide projectors to see if they are brighter.  We also purchased a long lens that is compatible with the other, smaller non-Kodak projectors: 200mm, f3.5 (not shown), for playing around.  It was around 10 euros including shipping.

Doris + Jan return from Meran, Italy, where we performed a sort of mini-shrooms (2shrooms?) show in support of the various other artists.

This included 2 technical workshops on PureData, a program for driving electronic music and visuals, etc. We had to be very careful because our analogue visuals easily dominated and destroyed the delicate digital fabrics.  See left.  Also, support for acoustical musicians and a drum/percussion group called LoA.

Koloman was the documentor for the event, and took lots of video of the 4shrooms visuals.  He has offered to do a clip, but we have to provide some soundtrack:  Watch this space for a call for the musical 4shroomies to get together and jam.

The trip there was funded by the new Verein running the space!  They paid for a bus to transport a group of Vienna artists for the week.  They also paid for a fantastic stage-roof that could be raised and lowered on demand.  Very high-tech, and incongruent amongst the other handmade projects.

Last Friday night under Pooool’s projections at Karlskirche, the 4shrooms inducted the newest member into our bosum:  Marc Kössler, also known as deepfjord.  Marc does all sorts of visual stuff like: “Maskierte und unmaskierte Ausschnitte, Einblicke und Bruchstücke grenzenloser Spielräume zwischen Technik, Natur und Fiktion.”  Yeah!

Projections at Karlskirche were done by Jan, Peter and our very own Georg.  It is every night this week, and has been there for the last couple of weeks.  A band generally plays in front.  We might drop in one night and organise a 4shrooms supplement, we have this week only.

Nuestro amigos La Trinchera del México D.F. performan en la clausura del festival Performagia 2008. Aqui una imagen solamente, y notícias que crecen y crecen como una tribu!? Los trincheritos ya cuentan ocho amigos, dos invitados y cinco músicos.

Saludos de Viena a Rafael, Morris, Aisel, Elena, Viviana, y tambien Sebastian, Antonio, Jania y Omar!  Un abrazo silencio al Alexander, Arthur, Manrico, Maria y Paul.  Y Francisco