Saturday the 18th October was the 3rd deviantart UK meet, which was held in London. Numbers grew slightly again from previous meets, with DAUK1 being at 13, DAUK2 at 21 and now DAUK3 at 26.

Our attendees, in alphabetical order, were:

`blackice ~boskysquelch ~boyrobot
~ctyle *cyberyt *darksavior
*drive `exorist ~faggus
~foalface `hameed *kachi
~killabitch ~knock ~laura
*lugerman ~mafiarisu ~m-i-b
+phae ~phaze05 `r0b
~rocksicle *snakerboy ~soraneko
~starlightdancer ~zack

After waiting at Hyde Park Corner tube station for any late comers, we headed into Hyde Park for a bite to eat, meet and greets, and to decide on where we’d like to head of to first. The general consensus was to pay a visit to everyone’s (not-so)favourite street magician in a box – David Blaine. So, we jumped back onto the underground and headed for Tower Bridge.

Well, we got there, and he was indeed in a box. Unfortunatly, he was not precariously hanging over the river, as we had been hoping. Even though we may have seemed unimpressed, the thousands of other people there were full of enthusiasm and made up for our lack of it.

After rounding everyone back up, we decide that since we’re pretty close to the Tate Modern, we should pay a visit there. We stop along the way at an open air food market, for a late lunch, then manage to find our way to the Tate.

We enter through the North entrance, to the amazing sight of Olafur Eliasson’s installation art, which is part of his “Unilever Series”, which is currently showing at the Tate (until 21st March 2004). For those of you that don’t know what this particular installation is, well.. it’s quite simply a representation of the setting sun. It takes up the entirety of the Turbine Hall, and consists of a mirrored ceiling, reflecting the semi-circle of a sun. The room is gently filled with smoke, and creates a feeling much like dusk. It’s very impressive, and we’ll come back to this in a little while.

We split into smaller groups, deciding to meet back on the bottom floor at 5. Current exhibitions include Sigmar Polke: History of Everything (until January 4th 2004), and the Common Wealth (until 28th December 2003). Plus the Still Life/Object/Real Life galleries, and Landscape/Matter/Environment galleries, and others.

So, a while later, ~knock and myself are admiring the view from the side windows when we get a phone call from `blackice. “We want to write stuff, gather deviants”. Okay…!? So, we head down, grabbing the Birmingham crew a floor down, and head to the very bottom floor, and the base of the installation art.

Now, we’d been watching people admire themselves in the ceiling mirror, making angels, spelling "Hi"...etc... and as deviants, we know we can do better. So, we head right to the front, since there’s more space, and start of with something simple. We spell “alt.uk” as homage to our UK IRC retreat. At this point, I’m sure the onlookers are thinking we’re German exchange students or something “WTF? Altuk?”. So, we wait for a few extra people, and go for something more artistic. The dA logo. This is quite hard to do, since bodies don’t naturally curve. Oh, and snakerboy, who directed this design (using the dA logo on his t-shirt as reference) neglected to note that we did it backwards. aD instead of dA. Whoops. Okay, so one more we think, lets do the big one. deviantART! We figure it out (don’t forget we have to do it backwards for it to reflect into the mirror correctly.) We get as far as DEVIANT when the entire hall erupts into applause. The whole place is watching us create these words – there must be hundreds of people. Cheers and applause. Now we know we’re on to something! We finish the word “DEVIANTART” and get another round of applause and cheers – a few flashes of cameras go off on us. We’re very pleased with our effort. Even more so when a French man approaches us for one last word. "How about we make peace?" We sort ourselves out, *snakerboy gathering some extras from the audience, the French-man included, and we spell “PEACE” (You can see our new French friend maybe, as part of the P). The applause and cheers were more than ever, even more flash photography, whistles. Amazing. Everyone in the hall is looking at us. Everyone sharing the same moment. The deviants became living works of art, now part of many strangers’ photography collections, and in gallery-goers memories. We leave the Tate at this point, all of us grinning. It was an incredible feeling to be part of a living work of art, and for so many people to have seen us.

So, after our brief time in the Tate lime-light we think a drink is in order, and head towards the pub. A good days deviating done.

[Photographs shown, courtesy of *snakerboy - Keep your eyes peeled for some more (hopefully clearer) photographs from other deviants as they get their films developed]

Thankyou to everyone who attended!!! See you at DAUK4!