Hello again!
This summer in August of 2017 I had the opportunity to join an awesome crew in helping them to set up their annual festival near Kassel, Germany. Through a friend I came into the Tanzboden crew which is responsible for the festivals DJ booth and dance floor. Over the course of a week we build a beautiful and sturdy booth. I took lots of pictures and I want to share some of them here with you. Since I was mostly involved in the process of building the DJ booth I didn’t get to many good pictures of all the other amazing things that were built for the festival, which would probably each deserve a post of their own.
Day -5
We started out with just a pile of wood and a rough idea that we sketched using SketchUp. Within one day we had the basic support structure of the booth up.
Day -4
On the second day we put on the roof. One of the people organizing the Tanzboden had got a hold of some metal sheets with old, beautiful poster on them. We used those to tile the roof. Even though it worked and looked very nice in the end it was a pain in the ass to put them together. They were all slightly different sized and we wanted to arrange them in such a way that they would overlap so rain would flow down the roof without getting in. Also we had to put in a night shift, because a thunderstorm was approaching that night and we wanted to get the booth dry before it hit. The thunderstorm was pretty bad, but the roof held perfectly and even the sofa stayed completely dry!
Also no build should ever be complete without gaffers tape as a integral part of the structure! :D In our case we used it to seal the topmost screws.
Day -3
During the third day we got a lot of help from a few different people. Together we put in the door, some windows on the side and started to put on boards to cover the front. We also put in a big hatch in the front, so the booth could be opened and closed, since it was only playing during the night. In the middle of the dance floor we planted a (dead) tree, which needed 8 people to carry it from the forest.
Day -2
This was the big day where we picked up and installed the big sound system. Was it ever fun to turn it on the first time! The backside of the booth was also covered with boards. Additionally some lights were installed behind the windows.
Day -1
I didn’t take many pictures on the fifth day, because everyone was really busy as it was already Thursday and there was still lots to do. But we were able to finish the sides with some more metal sheets and filled in the remaining holes with more wooden boards.
In case you where wondering what all the PVC piping you saw in some of the pictures was for: it was for the fog machine. There was a special thing about the fog machine though. We set it up in such a way, that the fog was actually coming out of the ground!
Day 0
Friday was the first day of the festival. There was a ton of things to finish. I built some covers to protect the speakers against rain. The decoration team spend the whole day making the space look beautiful. Then everything was cleaned up, the guests started arriving and the party began!
After the bands finished playing on the stage, the DJs at the Tanzboden took over.
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that I set up a beamer and some generative art computer program I wrote to make some colorful projection on the back of the booth. You can find more information about it in a future post.
On Saturday morning we had a beautiful sunrise and even a rainbow!
Day 2
Day 3
And that was it! All the guests left on Sunday and the field was all empty again. Fortunately we had the soundsystem for one more night.
Teardown Week
We spend the next 3 days taking everything back apart and another 2 days were necessary to put everything back into storage and to clean up. I didn’t take too many pictures of the process. A lot of the wooden boards from the outside were burnt, but all of the support structure was kept to maybe one day be build up again :)
