VITA CHRISTOPHER NOELLE (*1974)
BERLIN BORN MULTIMEDIA-ARTIST CHRISTOPHER NOELLE aka TOFA IS A PROFESSIONAL LIGHTPAINTING PHOTOGRAPHER AND VISUAL-ARTIST BASED IN LINZ (AUSTRIA).
Under the moniker „TOFA“ Christopher Noelle works as freelancing multimedia artist since 2003 with a deep focus on the themeworld of lightpainting - a special effect genre within the longtime-exposure photography. He combines techniques of light, projection, fireworks with the urban space.
In 2014 he moved from Berlin to Linz (Austria) and is the embassador for Austria of the international lightpainting world alliance (LPWA).
Christopher looks back on a very successful bike-trials and mountainbiking career, including a vice-world-champion title and a Guiness-Book-Record which he finished in the end of the 90s after riding more than 7 years as pro-rider due to a complicated broken leg. This also lead him to film and photography when he decided to flip the concept, now standing behind the camera. Whenever there´s a chance of working with the themes of extremesports, you can imagine Chris is keen on going for it in his very personal style.
The emphasis of his work goes far beyond conventional photography and can convince with a well-balanced compositing of light and shadow play.Besides jobs for sports- and fashion-magazines, he has developed an extraordinary knowledge of experimental photo- and film-techniques that are incorporated in conceptual ideas up to the final compositions,always integrate architecture, landscapes, urban space and people in very diverse styles.
The main characteristic of his pictures comes within the development process, as all those pictures are based on shooting at night. Each picture takes between 10 seconds up to several minutes of exposure-time. Mutiple cycles of the same choreography lead to the perfect picture, often including series of more than a hundred shots - always but never the same - however all of the pictures have a unique look as moving lightsources never react the same way.
The main advantage of this photo-technique is that the process leads to results that look like perfectly rendered 3D special-effects but all of this works come along without computer-aid and everything happens in real-time during the shooting. For the artist, It´s a permanent mindgame that makes it a challenge to create a calculated look in the final picture. By the combination of totally diverse lightsources such as LED-pixelstick, LED-HulaHoop, firecrackers, lightsabers, torches, brushes, flashlights and blades, Christopher can accentuate, manipulate and erase picture details as he likes, leading to the pure essence of lights in a puristic appearing beauty.
Chris also works on lightpaintings with industrial KUKA robots, which allows the exact reconstruction of motion sequences to create the perfect lightpainting image in the robotics laboratory of the Kunst-Universität Linz. His continuously evolving works were among others exhibited at the Ars Electronica Center, ran as festival installations (Ars Electronica Festival, Spotlight Festival, Festival of Lights, Cluji Art Festival) and have been published in international magazines such as Vogue, IdN, Wired, Men's Health, Fast Company, StreetwearToday and Page Magazine , There are numerous international online contributions and TV reports produced by ARTE, ARD and PRO7. Companies like Red Bull, Lacoste, Diesel, Sony, Carhartt, Carlsberg, Warsteiner and Converse have booked his art for exhibitions and campaigns.
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As an artist, he also shares his knowledge in the form of light painting workshops, offers lessons and collaborates with universities and athletes to create new conceptual art. In addition, Chris is part of the international projection mapping team The Core. and works in the in-house Metofa studio on Lightpaintings, animations, mapping installations, as well as sound and graphic designs.