The SXSW Art Program Presented by Lego showcases experiential and conceptual visual artworks that apply emerging technologies and immersive environments to spark discovery, inspiration, and connection. Incorporated into the broader ecosystem of creativity and innovation at SXSW, the art program serves as a launching point for collaborations and discussions around the role of visual and digital media arts in culture, technology, and the public realm.

The SXSW Art Program is an open call to studios, designers, collectives, and individual artists whose work is either in medium or concept, is at the intersection of art and technology, or creates an experience, whether through immersion or social engagement. Official selections of the program are chosen on the basis of their ability to enhance the landscape of the SXSW Conferences and Festivals and bring meaningful inspiration, joy, and discovery to attendees. We strive to showcase work from both emerging and established artists whose vision reflects the values of SXSW, including creativity, culture, storytelling, innovation, and social engagement.

The SXSW Art Program offers artists a unique platform to show their work within one of the most diverse, collaborative, and inventive communities in the world. Artists will have the opportunity to engage with individuals and organizations across many sectors, while debuting their work in front of the creative communities that converge at SXSW in Austin.

50 Moments
Celine Held & Logan George
Engineers: Rebecca Skurnik & Azalea Vaseghi
Executive Producers: Level Forward – Adrienne Becker & Melina Lizette

50 Moments highlights voices rarely heard. Five interactive screens display 50 short videos from individuals experiencing homelessness in New York City, recorded between 2015 – 2018. These stories are personal, mined from hours of conversation, giving viewers the opportunity to listen to intimate stories without the need to respond. Viewers can choose the next story shown on the screen with their phones, and replay stories via an interactive website.

ARTECHOUSE Presents Future Sketches
Zach Lieberman

ARTECHOUSE is the nation’s first innovative digital art space dedicated to showcasing experiential and technology-driven works by artists who are forerunners of the new age in the arts and technology. ARTECHOUSE PRESENTS: Future Sketches is a collaboration with one of the most dynamic pioneers in the field of coding and interactive media.

Zach Lieberman and his collaborators create digital poetry through code, technology and theory. Future Sketches is the first retrospective of Lieberman’s work with an emphasis on his eclectic style of sketching with code for creative exploration. The installations presented draw on over a decade of work and research in the field of media art, exploring how the body, voice and gesture can be transformed in expressive ways.

We invite you to imagine different possible futures – at the intersection of computation and design, for the interaction between humans and computers, where the boundaries between the visible and invisible are broken down, using expressive augmented reality.

Grow Your Own Cloud – The Data Garden
Cyrus Clarke, Monika Seyfried, Jeff Nivala

Grow Your Own Cloud – The Data Garden reimagines the cloud by storing data nature’s way – in the DNA of plants, working in collaboration with nature to alleviate the threat of Data-Warming.

The installation is a collaboration between the artists Cyrus Clarke (UK) and Monika Seyfried (PL) and scientist Jeff Nivala (US), supported by Unlisted Projects (US), The Museum of Human Achievement (US), Danish Arts in Austin, Roskilde Festival (DK) and Catch (DK).

Legacy
Nancy Baker Cahill

Legacy is an original, site-specific, animated AR drawing in 360° that addresses gentrification and climate change in Austin. Each brushstroke and color is inspired by either a local natural element or “unnatural” development. As the drawing increasingly twists, breaks apart, and coalesces, it transitions from organic tree-like marks to inorganic glass and mirror fragments. Legacy will be geo-located across from the Austin Convention Center in Brush Square park where it will hover above the treetops.

This piece is in collaboration with The Virtual Cinema Program.

Man and Woman Munch Museum at House of Scandinavia
Edvard Munch

Experience an original Edvard Munch painting at the Scandinavian House of SXSW! Titled Man and Woman, the artwork invites visitors to explore and reflect Munch’s universe, his ideas of the sexes and our existential relation to nature. Learn more about Munch and the picture in one of our daily popup presentations. Lasting ten minutes, it will give you a concise yet rich introduction into one of the pioneers of modern art.

Secret Garden
Stephanie Dinkins, Presented by NEW INC, Nokia Bell Labs, In partnership with Scatter

NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator based in New York, presents Secret Garden, an immersive storytelling installation that combines audio vignettes told by black women with dynamic, responsive visual feedback. The work is experienced as a non-linear episodic narrative of a multi-generational past, present, and future simultaneously. Conceived by artist Stephanie Dinkins, Secret Garden is inspired by autobiographical, ancestral, and futuristic experiences that highlight black female consciousness throughout history. Secret Garden is the culmination of the Nokia Bell Lab’s Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) residency program that engages NEW INC alumni and Nokia Bell Labs researchers for a year-long collaboration to produce new works of art that are enabled by Bell Labs technology. Dinkins collaborated with Emmy-award winning creative company Scatter, using Depthkit — a product incubated by Scatter during the inaugural year of NEW INC. Dinkins collaborated with Emmy-award winning creative company Scatter, using Depthkit — a product incubated by Scatter during the inaugural year of NEW INC.

Spectre
Bill Posters, Daniel Howe

Spectre presents sculpturally as a stone circle for the 21st Century and invites users in to worship at the altar of Dataism with the gods of Silicon Valley. Acquire the power of a tech giant; learn the secrets of ‘black box’ technologies; and explore the ethical and moral impacts of surveillance capitalism on privacy, trust, truth, and democracy.

This project is part of the Future Art and Culture programme at SXSW 2020 presented by British Underground and supported by funding from Arts Council England

Terminus
Jess Johnson, Simon Ward, Soundtracks by Andrew Clarke

TERMINUS is a virtual reality journey in five parts; journey through an arcane world of alien architecture and cryptic symbols, illustrated over several years through drawings by Jess Johnson, animated by Simon Ward, and enriched with soundtracks by composer Andrew Clarke.

The Future is A Constant Wake
Ariel Rene Jackson, Micheal J. Love

The Future Is A Constant Wake (2019) centers soil as tools to access knowledge from the past for the future. Ariel René Jackson collaborates with Michael J. Love to propose a somatic way of forging a connection with the past through touch and movement.

The Fair Grounds: Bumper Car Ballet
DROPSTUFF MEDIA

The Fair Grounds: Bumper Car Ballet playfully tackles the social implications of emerging autonomous technology. Visitors become a subject to the cars and experience first hand what it means to lose control when a computer takes over.