Glad I Went—A Quick Look Back at SXSW

It has been a few years since I attended SXSW so this year, I returned, curious to see how the festival of Interactive, Film and Music had evolved. Man has it evolved, to the point of leaving me a little overwhelmed by the quality of what was on offer. Also if I am honest a little frustrated as I queued for one thing, while simultaneously missing something else that I wanted to see. I spent a lot of my time in a virtual state of FOMO (“Fear Of Missing Out” the acronym of choice for this year). And since I couldn’t be in two places at once, I had to miss out on quite a lot. 

Otherwise it was a pretty inspiring week. 

The clash of technology, art, culture and brands created a wonderful “Mixing Desk” (music reference as audio seemed to be rising tide) of multidimensional experiences. There aren’t many places you can go and hear about The Future Of Warfare from the Pentagon, and then move on to The Future Of The Museum from The Natural History Museum. 

The Pentagon talked about Machine Learning on the battlefield and ended with an interesting ethical discussion on removing humans from the battle. Does this make us take war less seriously when the consequences are reduced? Will technology make it easier for us to go to war? 

The Natural History museum, on the other hand, showcased their team’s experiments with Virtual Reality—giving decades old exhibits new life. It was an intriguing glimpse into the interactive gallery of the future. They also showed real-time data visualization to bring the night sky to life in the amazing Planetarium experiences they are creating. 

In general, there was a lot of VR on display, including some amazing pieces that showed the power of experienced-based storytelling. Of all of these the The Mummy Virtual Experience was the jaw-dropping standout. 

The big themes emerging across a lot of the content tracks were “Automation” and “Autonomous”, but perhaps the biggest was “Artificial Intelligence.” Again and again we were asking ourselves "but what is it actually doing?" Answers were teased but not elaborated upon, and companies are still holding their cards very close to their chests. That said, some people are definitely getting it right and not hiding their success. Soul Machines (based in Auckland) was one mind-blowing example. By creating incredibly lifelike avatars (below), they’ve brought the idea of the chat bot to an entirely new level. 

One closing thought: in light of all the things I saw at SxSW—either up close or at a distance—politics was conspicuously absent. I was surprised. Considering the climate we’re in here in the US, and the attack that the Arts are under, I expected SXSW to be more of a platform of support for the arts, as well as a platform for political protest. Amid the hubbub of so much creative energy, the lack of politics struck me as a noteworthy silence.