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

CONNECTdeleuze conference, Cologne

Just sitting in the Philosophy Department at Cologne University as I write this report from a conference on Deleuze , appropriately called CONNECTdeleuze. Joe mentioned the trip on his blog (Vernacular Mappings), and so here we are.

Now at the half-way point – it’s a three-day conference – the talks have been of variable quality but there is a sense of optimism and energy about the gathering. Although we were not registered properly (resulting in our names not being included on the poster, and no name badges!), we have managed to speak with some very influential figures in the broad field of Deleuze studies, including but not limited to: Brian Massumi and Erin Manning. Exciting! Expect another post when I have access to the net again…