From Katarina’s pitch:
Last summer, I quit my job as a multimedia designer to go on a quest of creativity. My art was experimental before and it got a lot weirder. Kaleidescopy is a genre of art that allows for anything to be beautiful. It also has the power to transform beauty into terror (on occasion).
You can find Katarina Countiss on Twitter @katcountiss and learn more about her at katarinacountiss.com.
Continue reading “How I Became Seattle’s Premiere Kaleidescopist – Katarina Countiss”
What happens if you get 16 amazing people to talk about their passions, but gave them only 5 minutes and automatically advanced their slides every 15 seconds?
Experimentation has been core to Ignite since those first hypotheses were posed. In the past 9 years and 26 prior events, we’ve seen Ignite talks that have expanded our minds and have pushed the boundaries of what an Ignite talk can be. In preparation for next week’s Ignite, here a few of our favorite Ignite talks that had experimentation driving their theme.
Experimental Ignite Talks
Sol Villarreal asked, “Can one person improvise a short presentation inside someone else’s presentation?”
Noah Illinsky & Teresa Valdez Klein asked, “Can you get married in 5 minutes?”
Dave McClure answered a question that’s important to many of us, “How to measure experiments (aka startups)”
Hacking The Format
Two talks that were not experiments per se, experimented heavily with the how an Ignite talk could be presented.
In our first foray into live music, Karen Cheng showed us “How to Solve a Song.”
And finally, at our first outdoor Ignite (an experiment unto itself), Bev Sobelmen tells us how to run away and join the circus while performing on a trapeze.
Ignite 27: Experimentation is next week, May 20th and we’d love to see you there. Tickets are available online now. We expect another sell out crowd, so get your tickets today!
Do you want to know the secret of how artist think creatively? Why they do what they do and their ability to go to parts of their brain and body where most of us will never go?
About Bryan
Bryan Ohno is a Seattle art gallerist who features up and coming contemporary artist from the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Rim. His art career started in late 1980’s in Tokyo then worked with glass artist Dale Chihuly before opening his gallery in 1996, presently located in the International District, J-town neighborhood. You can find Bryan on Twitter @BryanOhno
Our first themed Ignite event (Experimentation!) will be on May 20th 7pm/8pm at Town Hall Seattle. Tickets $5 at the door or in advance (we sold out last time). Doors open at 7pm, with cash bar and a fun social game (you don’t have to play but you probably will despite what you think as you read this). Talks start at 8pm, with an nicely sized intermission for you to do various acts of biology and sociology, including getting more drinks. We received more than 50 submissions but due to the laws of space and time we can only have 16 speakers in one event (If you know how to transcend space and time we’d love to have you speak about it).
(The order of speakers for the evening is still TBD, but you really should come for the whole thing and get far more than your $5 worth):
Please spread the word. A great night awaits you and your friends.
Sometimes experimentation means pushing yourself, to see how you might grow and become a bigger person. Watch Cassie Wallender speak about her experiences with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. And then submit your own talk for Ignite Seattle 27.
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About Sol
Sol Villarreal reads the Seattle Times and all the local blogs obsessively so that you don’t have to. Every Sunday morning he sends out an email called Sol’s Civic Minute that’ll tell you what’s happening in Seattle in just 60 seconds per week.
KUOW will broadcast the talks from Ignite Seattle 26 on their show Speakers Forum tomorrow night. You can catch a preview on SoundCloud, or tune into KUOW 94.9 FM tomorrow at 11pm.
Ignite Seattle 27, on May 20th 2015 will be the first time we’re going to have a theme for the evening. What’s a theme, you ask? Good question. What we want to do is an experiment. All previous Ignites have been a potpourri of topics, ideas, styles and attitudes. What would an evening of talks focused on a theme be like? Better? Worse? We want to learn.
And it’s only fitting for our first themed Ignite that we pick the theme of EXPERIMENTS!
An experiment is when you do something with the goal of verifying, refuting, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. In other words, choosing to act fully aware you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Q: What kinds of talks do we want?
Good ones, of course. We’re looking for stories about an experiment you did in your life. It could be something you did at work, or the very idea of a career you tried to pursue. Maybe it’s about a place you moved to or a person you were trying to be with. It could be something deeply serious (an experiment of belief). Or perhaps it’s something very silly (an experiment in how many pierogis it takes to fill your car).
Q: Does the experiment have to have succeeded?
Absolutely not. The theme is not “amazing success stories!” We’re hoping to hear stories with a range of outcomes. Interesting failures, experiments that surprised you or your friends or changed how you look at something, including possibly yourself.
Q: Are the other restrictions on Ignite talks the same?
Mostly yes. Our default assumption as you might guess is that all talks will follow the Ignite format: 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide. But we are open to the possibility of one or two talks that experiment with the format itself (If you attended Ignite Seattle 15 you witnessed chainsaw tricks by Jason Quick, a talk given from up on a trapeze, and other format twisters). If your idea for a talk involves an experimental format: perhaps you want to juggle chainsaws blindfolded (that’s an experiment if you’ve never done it before), do a talk in total darkness, or who knows what. If you have a format experiment be sure to submit your talk early and talk to us about it.
All Good? Good. You can submit your talk idea here.
(Here from Ignite 15 is Jason Quick, one armed performance artist)
Ignite Seattle 