Wednesday 9 November 2011

PKN Volume 1

Last night the worldwide fast-talking, speed slide showing, energising phenomenon made it to Dundee: PechaKucha night Dundee!

We are now one of over 400 cities across the world to encourage creative individuals to share their respective practices/interests/lives following the simple format - 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide.
We saw/heard about the V&A project, Vanilla Ink, the soon to be released Superman game designed by Tiger Games in Dundee, Dundee based textile designer Hilary Grant and much more.

Amongst the presenters and organisers there was certainly an appreciation of the creative potential of Dundee, and the 200 strong audience gathered from around the city and farther afield would suggest this positivity is shared.

The night ran smoothly and presenter after presenter gave us an interesting/insightful/informative 6mins 40sec. Frequently presenters drew on their personal history: Kirsty Maguire's family routes in architecture; how practicing meditation has highlighted to Rohan Gunatillake the importance that our attention be focussed on more meaningful and valuable things than the daily distractions of contemporary life, and Ross Fraser McLean's photographs and description of a recent experience in India during which he spent some time detained by snake charmers of the Sapera caste in North India.

The presentations were concluded with Sink, an Edinburgh based band who improvised along to 20 slides of photographs they had never seen before. The jazz/Balkan classical sounds brought the images to life and the audience watched intently as the band interacted with one another to create a mesmerising performance.

The next PKN Dundee should be early next year.

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