Blogs

Pecha Kucha: Design in 20 Slides for 20 Seconds Each

I was reading the San Francisco Bay Guardian and came across a posting for the a thing called Pecha Kucha. It got awarded the best 'Hyperintellectual Show and Tell' by the annual Best of the Bay awards that the publication puts on. After reading about it, it reminded me a bit about Share does, but in a slightly different (slide oriented) format. The text below is taken from the Pecha Kucha website:

"Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. (Admittedly, it was also a way to get
more people to visit SuperDeluxe - their then newly opened multimedia event space in Tokyo).

But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you'll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a demand that seems to be global - as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 80 cities across the world."

Yes it did. I had an amazing time playing alongside Tom Burbank and Jega. I have never seen Kadan so PACKED.

People were writing about it up on the Planet Mu website too. A fellow named teknowiz wrote:

Just wanted to say I was really impressed with the sets at the last share. Darryl and Daniel were totally solid and Morgan's feedback
virtuosity is inspirational.
We really should get some kind of recorder lined up as the ambient jam
was quite smokin too, you never know when things will really click.

I've found a pretty good way to make Koan Pro generative software truly portable: it's the Audigy 2ZS sound card from Creative Labs.

Here's how it works: Koan Pro is a very user-friendly, powerful generative music (aka algorithmic music) program from SSEYO in the UK that generates a multichannel midi stream from random numbers in a variety of ways. Most laptops (perhaps all of them) have frankly lousy soundcards with cheap, tinny sounds. The Audigy 2ZS is a tiny (2 x 4") card that fits in the PCMCIA slot, and connects to female 1/8" stereo audio jacks. No additional power source is required beyond the laptop's power. With the associated software, and included "soundfonts", it can carry out respectable midi rendering into good general midi sounds, and provides additional effects (pitch shifting, various reverb, distortion, etc.) on top of this. By downloading other "soundfont banks" and adding them to the soundfont bank library, the midi output can be rendered into a wide variety of other instrumental and synthetic sounds beyond the general midi sounds provided with the card. The card costs ~ $100, and many soundfonts are available free on the internet. You can also make your own soundfonts from samples.

A Digital Story From MACSD's Commmunity Voices Project

This is a story I helped a man create for the Media Art Center's Digital Storytelling Station. In it, a father attempts to articulate a vision for his son in spite of being estranged from him by the abuse he endured from his own father.

Not all the stories are as intense, passionate or poetic. Some are downright funny and humorous, others optimistic and hopeful...

For more information about this unique project visit the Community Voices page here. To set up an appointment to tell your story, sign up by clicking here.

One of my favorite VSTs for the Mac (there's also a PC version) has got to be InstaJungle. I love this thing. I can grab and chop up beats like a skilled Tom Jenkinson sushi chef. I freakin LOVE it. It's addictive.

Check it out here .

This was a great Share event to start off the new year. I had a ton of fun meeting new people, setting up (a slightly different config this time around that made the space a little more intimate) and of course JAMMING. We went right into it and were visitied by Marcos and Robert from the Trummerflora Collective. We were quite honored to have them and the other jammers come down and participate.

A big thanks to Chris for taking and uploading pictures to our gallery! Share LOVES content! Keep posting team!

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Share: One Year Strong