Pecha Kucha 6: Chit Chatting About Art and Design

Pecha Kucha means "chit chat" in Japanese. It's also the name of an arts and design event that started in Tokyo in 2003 and has since spread its wings. The forum is simple: 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, talk, hope people are listening over the bar noise. The first Pecha Kucha Boston was held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on April 21, 2007; Boston's sixth Pecha Kucha took place last Wednesday at Mantra. Presenters included Kevin Grady of Lemon, Shauna Gillies-Smith of Ground, Clif Stoltze of Stoltze Design, and more.

The event played host to the creations of designers working in architecture, print media and corporate logos, installation, web design, and sustainable automobiles. While the Pecha Kucha events have been centered on the work of designers working in separate camps in Cambridge, namely the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the MIT Media Lab, there was strong industry representation as well. With many of the organizers hailing from the same institutions, there is also a strong academic presence. A call-out for "whoop whoops" was made to members of the professional design association AIGA; though few "whoops" were heard, several in attendance reluctantly raised their drink-filled hands.

For some, Pecha Kucha offered a venue to publicize some of their independent art outside of professional craft. For others, it was a time to tell a more personal story. Lisa Williams of H2Otown and Placeblogger quit her travel-filled job and realized (or hoped) there must be something to do in Watertown and places like it around the country. To prove her point, she started a website.

Steffen Koury of Proteus displayed a wide variety of furniture he had photographed at the Milan Furniture Show, including chairs with intricate arboreal patterns etched through them and fishbowl-style bathtubs with a single glass wall.

Skylar Tibbits presented some of his installation work, which resembles either the modular design of a snake's scales, or the modality of needing to have instruction built onto all the parts. His pieces are geometric, mathematical, abstract and seem to be displayed a lot in Germany.

Pecha Kucha 7 is coming. Sort your slides.

Post contributed by Russell Hanson. Image of Skylar Tibbits' Tesselion used with permission.