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• Big Car Gallery

John Beeler of Indianapolis is one of the organizers of Pecha Kucha Night Vol. 1. (Heather Charles / The Indianapolis Star)

Sometimes, constraints inspire creativity. Overcoming limitations and borders, flourishing in spite -- or because -- of them is part and parcel of the artistic mission. It also is one of the concepts at play in Friday night's "pecha kucha" event -- a rigid Japanese format for creative people to talk about and present ideas.

Pecha kucha (pronounced "peh-chak-cha") rules are simple: Each presenter may show 20 slides, speaking for 20 seconds per slide, to communicate whatever they will. This will be the city's second event of its kind after February's evening at the Harrison Center for the Arts.

John Beeler, 31, is one of the organizers of Friday's event at Big Car in Fountain Square. He's a stay-at-home dad by day and works for Asthmatic Kitty Records by night.

What is pecha kucha, and why has it come to Indy?

At its heart pecha kucha is the 20-by-20 format. It was started by a Tokyo design firm ..... looking for a way for people to share ideas without being boring. They came up with this idea, pecha kucha, which means chit-chat. The idea is that people collaborate and walk away from each pecha kucha with ideas that they can use in their own work or discipline or field. It's coming to Indianapolis because it's a quickly globalizing movement.

At the first pecha kucha event, in February, people presented on an array of topics, from the beauty of The Big Donut to strip mall design to the Japanese notion of kawaii. What can we expect this time?

We've got a similar array. Some architecture in there, some humor in there. A gentleman from Champaign-Urbana will act as if he is a military contractor presenting fake weaponry. We've got a couple of artists presenting their work and the ideas behind their painting. We have a politically oriented presentation. So it's a little less on the design side and a little more on the art and philosophy side.

Unlike other presentation formats, discussion and conversation between audience members is encouraged throughout, yes, and presenters almost compete with the bar in the corner?

The idea is that alcohol serves as something of a lubricant -- people during boring presentations have the freedom to talk. ..... The spirit of pecha kucha is that it should be lively and loud and chaotic, and that can only happen when people are talking to one another.

It sounds like a valuable exercise for artists trying to get to the heart of their ideas.

I think ..... it forces the presenters to boil their ideas down ..... to the bare minimum, and distill their message into an easily communicable format. I hope that when the presenters create their presentations that they're benefiting from having to find the one thing they need to communicate. The idea of pecha kucha is that an engineer has an idea that a soccer player can use. Everybody's work and life can be shared, once you remove it from the immersion of the way we work.

Pecha Kucha Night: Vol 2

Where: Big Car, 1043 Virginia Ave., Suite 215, Indianapolis

When: Friday, April 25, at 9 p.m.

Tickets: $20, includes beer and wine (RSVP to tickets@pkindy.org prior to the event to get a pecha kucha T-shirt designed by Kristian Anderson).

Info: info@pkindy.org