Queuing for Pecha Kucha #14, SAT

I went along to a Pecha Kucha evening recently (although already ten days ago!), after I was invited by Chris Salter. He mentioned:

If you haven’t been, it’s totally fun and crazily packed with people. It will give you a good slice of what is going on with the design, architecture, arts and technology communities here.

Crazily packed is certainly true! Not only did I have to queue to get in, but the SAT was heaving with people (certainly well over 600 people). Although I had been ‘back-stage’ at the SAT – well, upstairs, anyway – I hadn’t seen the space they have for public events. There are two enormous rooms and these were both teeming with people.

Pecha Kucha Montréal #14
a unique kind of meeting with the design community
20 images x 20 seconds x come to be inspired !

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
doors open @ 19:40
presentations start @ 20:20
SAT [Société des arts technologiques]
1195 Saint-Laurent
5 $

Pecha Kucha nights are unique, vital platforms for interdisciplinary exchanges and meetings organized with the primary objective of providing public forum in which creators from diverse horizons can present their thoughts and processes on projects that have been completed, are underway or that they are still dreaming about. The concept is simple: each participant presents 20 slides and comments on each one for 20 seconds.

Chris introduced the research he is doing in his lab (xmodal), part of Hexagram at Concordia and Luc Courchesne, the director of the Panoscope project, also gave a short presentation.

What is particularly interesting about xmodal is that is avowedly a studio-lab, a term which Chris himself takes from the work of Barry et al. (2008), which is where I discovered the term myself.

labXmodal is a studio-lab founded by Chris Salter dedicated to the research, development, and creation of performative environments – physical spaces with a focus on dynamic and temporal processes over static objects and representations. We research and develop new hardware and software sensing technologies, apply these tools and techniques in solo + collaborative, internationally disseminated artistic works and critically reflect on these practices through technical and theoretical/historical publications, talks and public presentations.

The evening was bizarre (people talking through the presentations, a bar open in one room, large screens on all walls) but of great interest and definitely entertaining. If only all conferences adopted this approach!

Pecha Kucha proves popular, SAT

Laboratoire Art&D, SAT, Montreal

On Wednesday Christoph Brunner from the SenseLab invited me to go along with him to the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) to see the Telepresence project that he is involved with there. We met just outside the Art&D lab – no public access – and met with Mark who is working on the technical side of things. He showed us the contraption they have assembled (I’m not sure it has a name) and how it worked. Christoph is presenting a paper on the project in early December and is interested in the philosophical aspects of the device, how it might offer new ways of experiencing and interacting with the world. It’s very much a work-in-progress and although it is driven by practical concerns (for example: how might you be able to chat to someone and see more than just their face, how might you be able to collaborate differently on projects, how might conferences work if they weren’t limited to lecture theatres) but there is room to play with the settings to create novel situations or environments. The machine (see below) is large and can shut once you are inside. There are cameras filming you and videos move around as you move yourself. So, if you were talking to somebody, their video would follow you around and you wouldn’t have to worry about where you looked because there would be cameras able to film you from a variety of angles.

Telepresence project, SAT, Montreal

A day earlier, on Tuesday, there had been a ‘Show and tell’ session in the TML. Adrian Freed had been invited to talk about his work in experimental music. Adrian is part of the Center for New Music & Audio Technologies (CNMAT), which is based on IRCAM, where he used to work ¹. We heard about some of the projects Adrian had been involved in and he had many interesting things to say (including about music and space). He is currently playing with e-textiles as the flexibility of fabric offers him more freedom. Naveed and Laura presented some of their work as well (on ambisonics and magnetism respectively) and there was plenty of discussion afterwards. The rest of the week was fairly quiet and I spent most of my time in the lab, either reading (all sorts) or writing (in my diary, or on a series of short essays I hope will feed into my work).

Show and tell, TML

—————————————————————————————————————————–