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…

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

…plötzlich geht’s rund…
dann noch: Phillip’s space, vielleicht Okto, ……….
oh du meine güte, 4shrooms everywhere, aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

The 4shroom analogue VIP lounge series was successfully launched last saturday (2.2.08) at the soundframe festival party @ TU wien, prechtlsaal. With special guest appearance of Andi, our new overheadgeekfriend! Welcome Andi!

For the first time we had 4 OHP continuously worked on for 3 hours! But we truly broke a record in spontaneous audience OHP takeover. we never knew who they where, but hey, they looked as if they had done this all their lives long. We shall hire them the next time, or at least get their e-mail adresses.

anyone having photos please say so!!!!!!!!!

as we now have a few new images turning up … I was forced to write an automatic website. This takes away the artistic composition of before and creates a dynamic random composition, with the sole exception of leaving the big picture where it is.

Now … every time you refresh, the page re-arranges. So it is like a lottery of colour.

To make this tractable in programming terms, I simplified the words that were scattered across all blocks and put them into one single white block. Yeah, a little more boring but easier to find? Anyways, try it.

Georg is working on a History of Projection Lecture for 9th of January.

Keep the date free! He needs helpers…

It’s at MuseumsQuartier in the evening. More details as they come to hand…