Review KIKK festival 2015

The two day conference, celebrating their fifth anniversary, hosted an impressive line up of leading names in the creative field like: Moniker, Niklas Roy, Tobias van Schneider and Golan Levin.

Neon Moire visited on the second conference day that started with Rachel Wingfield’s presentation. Rachel founded Loop.ph and specialises in responsive environments inspired by the study of living systems. She shows an impressive portfolio of work that intervenes at an urban scale and develops collaborative tools for public engagement initiatives.

We missed lab[au]’s presentation as we went wondering about ‘The Market’ on Place d’Armes. At this venue, hosted by Hello bank, we discovered experimental innovative projects from makers that are starting a business through crowdfunding. We totally liked 'Vi’ a music device that allows hearing-impaired children to experience music in a way that encompasses both tactile and visual music experience. And were charmed by Hovertone application that allows you to draw sound.

Back at the theater producer Juliette Bibasse kicked ass with her presentation about working as head of production for Joanie Lemercier’s studio. Her drive and dedication to Joanie’s work were catching. And she gave us 3 things to remember: “Look for balance, keep sharing and always experiment"

Anton and Irene brought their ‘starting a business’-talk with humour. Speaking frankly about their naivety when they decided to leave their well paid jobs at a major agency to start on their own.

After the break Daniel Leithinger gave a fairly scientific talk about his research on physical telepresence, focused on the ability to capture and remotely render the shapes of people and objects at MIT Media Lab. While ‘inventor’ Niklas Roy showed us his hands on approach to come up with useless things.

Tobias van Schneider took the audience on a journey along his ‘stupid’ side projects and taught us to KISS (Keep it simple and stupid) or just to follow your heart and work on ideas and concepts you believe in. Field ended this day of talks with a not so interesting (sorry just an opinion) portfolio presentation.

What’s always hard at events like these is that you have to choose. You can’t visit exhibitions or attend workshops and parallel sessions without missing out on some of the main presentations. Luckily for us and you the main presentations are recorded and will be online soon.

It’s really impressive that KIKK Festival is a free festival to attend, with live stream video of the main conference, speakers from around the world. We're looking forward to the next one.