Vancouver’s Pecha Kucha Night #18 @ Vogue Theatre

Pecha Kucha Night is Vancouver’s version of the world wide  Pecha Kucha, now at 449 cities across the globe. It has a beautiful format: 20 pictures with 20 seconds for each picture. At this Vol, #18, they actually incorporated 20 seconds worth of video too, which was the first time this has ever been done, I believe.

Chronicles of Times has been fortunate enough to have previously covered PKN Vol 17, and Vol 16, which were just as enlightening as Vol 18 turned out to be.

The night was spearheaded by a great local band called Sun Wizard . They were groovy, and started the night off just as it should.

Steven Cox, the host, was as charming as ever, said that the next one would be guest hosted? That should be interesting..

I managed to snap a nice profile shot of Becki Chan who is the event organizer. Both Steven and Becki represent Cause & Affect.

The shows line-up of presenters started with Todd Falkowsky. He talked, in a very structured way about how we need a revolution in design. Incorporating everything we have in our lives, and taking hints from other cultures in our creative process. Personally, I already feel we are starting to use this with efforts to become more transparent, but the direction I feel is essential, which I fully support.

Sandy Garossino, of the Vancouver Not Vegas Coalition, talked about how we are being led, by marketing and other creative brainwashing tactics towards a pre-designed life path, as illustrated by the elder lady turning into a zombie in front of the slot machine.

I really enjoyed her discussion, since I myself try to be very aware of the programming we are sub-consciously being put through.

James Culham of Blah City discussed integrating engineering and design; how we can live in harmony with the environment, as well as with humans excessive needs. I liked the example he gave of the building that has access to every floor via bicycle.

Erin Sinclair & Rob Forbes are the creators of This Is East Van.

They discussed a lot about how the idea was initially inspired, as well as their future projects. I really enjoyed their community based approach to their creative directions.

Konstantinos Mavromichalis of Urbanvisuals has some really cool ideas with his urban visualizations. His goal is integrating urban areas with visual effects to create a more friendly experience for the visitor.  He showed us some of his visualizations that he’s created, one which I personally experienced at Vancouver’s birthday this year at Stanley Park.

Troy Barrie talked to us mostly about his time over in Africa, where he worked with Engineers Without Borders.

He told the very tragic story of a girl he met while over there. She had gone to the city because there was no work for her where she was from in order to earn money to send her sister to University, and I also believe it was to create a local school for the kids to get an education. She came back with AIDS (it may have been HIV) and a baby, not from a romance, but from being raped in the notoriously dangerous city.

The picture above shows the girl with her sister.

Jonathan Simkin was a very colorful creature, who comes from the music industry, in a way. He has found himself as a Music Industry Lawyer and President of 604 Records.

He talked a lot about how he landed where he was, and iterated how he had never really planned to be there, it just all kind of did.

604 Records was started with Nickelback artist Chad Kruger, and is one of BC’s biggest labels. I found it funny that he made a clause before he mentioned he worked with Chad Kruger that we shouldn’t boo him. Seems funny how much hate people have for Nickelback, when they were so very popular just a few short years ago.

The Loose Affiliates consisted of Olena Chytra, Philipp Dittus, Alana Green, Katy Young, who any Vancouverites would know as the designers of Picnurbia, a grass like resting area placed on Granville Street for a few weeks in the summer of downtown Vancouver.

They talked about their  process to creation, and also their ideas for the future. They discussed how it’s important to make effective use of all our space when designing, asking the crowd why we should have creative restrictions and many obstacles that have to be jumped in order to output these creative ideas.

Nicole Bridger talked about her inspiration in her fashion designing for her company. I really enjoyed how she used colours to really mimic her own personal emotions at the time.

I think colour therapy is a really interesting topic of study, and fully support trying to align ones mood with the colours, especially in clothes. Perhaps it’s something we already subconsciously do.

I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Cocking’s talk. He is the Art Director for D&M Publishing, dealing what seemed mostly with books. Yes, the ones you physically read. He seemed to have a very romantic relationship with the hard bound variety, which were clearly illuminated with his designs he highlighted in the presentation.

Sean Orr, a writer (and photographer) for Scout Magazine,  was an interesting character.

At one point he sat down during his talk, which was the first time I’ve ever seen that, and he repeatedly asked the crowd why we would have paid $15 to get into the show and we refuse to (or very rarely) support local projects, artists, ideas, etc. He also talked about how some great local efforts get locked up and shut down because they lack funding, when other, seemingly pointless pursuits that the city funds with millions of dollars go ahead without any borders or opposition.

I think he had a very great message that was probably overlooked by many people because of his attitude. His whole talk was summed up very effectively with his closing remarks (which ironically were given after his time was up, implying he seemingly was enjoying his talk up there) that were along the lines of: “Buy art!” Perhaps he mentioned make it local too.

The final speakers were Cameron MacLeod & Curtis Grahauer who talked about their new movie Steel Viper Force. Personally I found they were trying to be too funny, but I think it suited their movie.

Pecha Kucha Night Vol. 19 is already planned for late November already, head to their facebook page to check it out.

All photographs are taken by Ned Tobin and Sarah Canning, who were representing King Kabuz Media and Chronicles of Times.