Pecha Kucha Boston 21

[magid]

Last Tuesday I went to the 21st Pecha Kucha in Boston. It's a Japanese-started event that has designers and other interesting people present 20 slides for 20 seconds each about creative projects.

This time, it was held at a dimly-lit bar downtown, using the blank wall above the bar to project on. After the intro, these were the talks (with a break in the middle for more beer consumption, which I used to continue crocheting as I had through the talks):

1. Aileen Benson, Style Fashion Production, was the most boring talk, about how she put on this or that fashion show, mostly for charity. I suppose it could have been interesting, but she was always sort of running after the slides.
   
2. Andrew Sempere, Artistic Mediums II, talked about a show that just closed in Newton that involved interactive art.
   
3. Ben Houge talked about nonlinear sound structures and how they're used in games, in what was sort of like a performance art piece, using aural looping in ways that were intriguing, but by the end were frustrating, because I wished to hear his ideas, which felt just at the edge of what I could grasp if I could only hear the words. I wrote down "responsive music system in a dynamic space," and "all music is a game," and "a game is a system mutually constrained for an agreed goal."
   
4. Ben Rudnick, FIGMENT Boston, aka Gonzo, presenting the ideas behind FIGMENT, and encouraging people to become involved in this year's event (June 4-5, on the Greenway, then the NY FIGMENT the following weekend, with the brand new Jackson, MS, FIGMENT in May). I volunteered last year, and had a great time.
   
5. Brien Baker, Declan Keefe, Gabriel Bergeron, Boston Architectural College (BAC), Ecotopian House, talked about getting funding to build green housing for those in need of shelter.
   
6. Daniel Leithinger, MIT Media Lab, Tangible Media Group spoke about, well, I'm not exactly sure.
   
7. Dave Peth, WGBH Boston, Design Squad Nation, had the most engaging presentation, about getting kids involved in making stuff. Not genius kids, just regular kids, getting them involved and enthusiastic.
   
8. David Silverman, map-lab, talked about 3-D mapping.
   
9. Elizabeth Roncka did an improv movement performance, which was interesting, yet confused me, since it wasn't anything like I'd expected given "presentations/talks based on slides". Also, sitting at the back, I mostly missed the details.

Oh, and the best phrase of the evening: "professional chicken." Which had me thinking of chickens in three-piece suits carrying briefcases.

Comments

[arfur]

..., MIT Media Lab, ... spoke about, well, I'm not exactly sure.

That is so Media Lab...