Whether you've attended a Pecha Kucha (Pay-chach-ka) or not, Saturday Night's event, held at Western New York Book Art Collaborative (WNYBAC), was both informative and amusing.
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In this simple exercise in presentation, artists and presenters are given the ability to show 20 slides, for 20 seconds each, giving viewers a concise idea of what they're working on, or toward. Mark Dytham, a Tokyo-based Brit who is co-credited with bringing the presentation form to the masses, says the time restrictions on the narratives for Pecha Kucha (Japanese for "chatter") cuts out the "preciousness in people's presentations." The result is good, concise information.
Subjects at WNYBAC ranged from artist/documentarian road trips, to gender identity. One presenter simply chose to throw the slides to the wayside and shaved off his rather awesome beard as an encore, leaving the host to sign off through a mic adorned with hair. Another presenter ran an amusing stream-of-consciousness ramble, that was in part accompanied by some slides of himself, robotically wandering the Performing Arts Center at UB in a box with a window cut-out.
Another presenter, Cayden Mak talked about the cyborg-like life of being a transgendered individual. In a most intelligent narrative, Mak described inner feelings, while the slides documented the "what you see" all the way to "what is" in this keen evolution of being.
Local photographer Viktoria Ciostek presented on The Big V, her upcoming pilgrimage from Alaska, to Texas, to Maine, with plenty of stops in between. She'll be documenting the entire experience, and we'll be able to enjoy it through her blog.
According to Shasti O'Leary Soudant, Pecha Kucha events are sometimes as important to the artist as they are to the audience. A lot of artists in this town are lone wolves, and the preparation it takes to present often helps define direction for the artists themselves.
Our final pronouncement: Delightful. When's the next one?
Image: WNYBAC site's SRO crowd.
Correction on pronunciation: pe-chak-cha
It is Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of chit chat or chatter.
You can also listen to pronunciation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdghID66kLs
Daniel Pink lied to me? http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha
Darn!
Yeah, it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled.
I don't know why someone felt the need to add-in the false pronunciation that way. It exoticizes it, or something?
I suppose it's best not to expect too much.