Art, Everywhere: Learnings From SXSW 2023
Credit: Austin American-Statesman
Since its inception in 1986, when a small group of folks in entertainment and media gathered in Austin to discuss the future of the industry, South by Southwest (SXSW) has kept art and creativity at the core of its nearly two-week long festival. Separated into a week of an ideas-generating conference followed by a plethora of live music and film debuts, SXSW has become a hub for all things immersive, experiential, and thought provoking.
Farmboy’s Senior Marketing Manager, Mel Mok, attended SXSW this year to explore the possibilities of art, technology, and the fascinating intersections within the creative industries that can spark design innovations for our clients and artist network. Here are some of her biggest takeaways:
Nothing can speak to values-driven narratives quite like art-infused spaces
Brands activate the SXSW grounds in interesting, engaging, and experiential ways. It was hard to find any branded pop-ups that didn’t speak to the company’s larger mission or values to the nearly 300,000 attendees. The activations that truly stood out, though, took an artful approach in communicating their brand’s purpose, and storytelling their perspectives that contributed to engaging social discourse and dialog. Whether taking a stand on civic issues or promoting the urgent need for greater focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work, artful installations were used as vehicles to drive narratives home in a visceral and memorable way.
This art installation by The Human Rights Foundation is an extension of their Discounted Lives campaign which, the foundation describes, “creatively reveals the real-time costs of fast fashion on the Uyghur people forced to work in the industry. The interactive installation displays two racks of T-shirts, one listed at $4.99 and the other at $44.99. Receipts show the reasons behind the discounts, including forced labor and human rights violations, that account for the large price difference.”
Credit: Human Rights Foundation
An artful activism-rooted installation by The Zinn Education Project, African American Policy Forum, and LUSH showcasing the various subject matter of banned books across the United States and raising awareness of the policy decisions behind them.
Edeleman Impact’s artful interactive lounge entitled Block Party creatively showcasing the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) trends in 2023.
This form of immersive storytelling was also a recurring subject in several panel talks during the conference, with the likes of LEGO, NASA, Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Lyft all participating in the conversation and exploring how these kinds of experiences can be incorporated into their own work.
As we apply this lens to the architectural and interior design space, we’re well-versed in the power of art and how a thoughtful art experience can make a lasting impact on the end user. Not only that, but using art as a vehicle to further the storytelling behind a brand is becoming an increasingly valuable opportunity to cultivate connection with and amongst our communities. We’ve explored this opportunity in depth with Ford Motor Company, building a global art narrative that speaks to the brand at large while creating rich narratives that speak to its historic legacy in the automobile industry, enhancing the workplace experience for their employees, and bringing local artists into the fold to create authentic moments of community connection and equity building.
Acquisitions from Douglas Coupland’s Fordite series hang in the lobby of Ford Experience Center. These repurposed detached hoods of Ford muscle cars are covered with painted patterns that simulate the look and colors of fordite, the hardened build-up of automotive paint removed from car spray-painting booths of the 1960s and 1970s. The effect is hypnotic, and the works emanate a psychedelic energy while speaking to notions of nostalgia, beauty, and waste.
“Using art as a vehicle to further the storytelling behind a brand is becoming an increasingly valuable opportunity to cultivate connection with and amongst our communities.”
The importance of art-infused spaces was also greatly emphasized in workplace discussions. In “Return to Office Data Will Shift Skylines,” every panelist was in full agreement that art plays a major role in creating an environment that’s worthwhile for employees to return to in the new hybrid work model – especially when it comes to designing spaces that keep employee well-being top-of-mind.
There’s a growing body of research exploring the positive impact art has on individual well-being that goes well beyond the classic application of biophilic design features and into other subjects that cultivate an atmosphere designed for creativity and collaboration like abstract art, figurative art, and beyond. We are seeing this more and more in workplace design, and thoughtfully curated art programs are critical to successful workplace engagement.
Data art for complex storytelling
While not explored under the same conference tracks, the theme of art as a tool to communicate big ideas was everywhere. While graphic designers and visual communicators would identify this as data visualization, many discussions explored the impact that artistic interpretation of data has on creating more powerful and visceral statements.
In the panel talk “Data Art: Processes and Perspectives,” each speaker explored their personal ways that their practice opened up opportunities to make audacious ideas digestible. Data artist Laurie Frick shared her example installation for the Houston Fed that interpreted how 60 individuals, whose data was collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, spent their money in one year – which ultimately highlighted the economic disparities around equity and access.
Where Does The Cash Go?, 2020, Federal Reserve Bank, Houston. Credit: Laurie Frick
Fellow panelist and Northeastern University researcher Jane Adams explored her own recent sculptural installation of lucite and mylar using artificial intelligence to compile 17,474 free stock photos (with all artists credited in a seemingly endless paper scroll into a layered aerial application). Data visualization designer Sarah Miller went in-depth on her work at Pentagram to create easily-digestible imagery of extremely complex data.
The benefits of data art was a main topic of conversation in another panel, “Civic Design: How To Build Cities For The Future.” This discussion emphasized the importance of using art to engage communities, accurately reflect the diversity of populations within these communities, and co-create artful experiences together with them to emphasize the civic realities that need attention.
Panelist Embla Vigfúsdóttir, Artist-in-Residence for the City of Reykjavik, shared her participatory installation that highlighted the experiences that Icelandic schoolchildren were facing by holding a participatory art installation workshop to create rows upon rows of wooden beads that explore these children’s emotions, outlook on their future, and their thoughts on how they most felt supported.
When people are at the heart of your company or organization, there is ample opportunity to directly reflect these individuals, their communities, and their nuanced stories using data as a powerful artistic medium.
City of Reykjavík Artist in Residence Embla Vigfúsdóttir’s participatory art installation, Perlubönd, is made up of wooden beads on strings compiled by young children in response to questions about their personal feelings, feelings about school, opinions and reflections on their daily lives. This was in support of the city’s Better City for Children project as a way to impactfully engage with their most important members of the initiative: the children. Credit: Embla Vigfúsdóttir
Using technology to empower and amplify creativity
One of the foundational topics at SXSW was the influence of generative AI on society at large and its impact on attending industries like advertising and design through to architecture and healthcare.
Unsurprisingly, iterative products and services were debuted in droves at SXSW, highlighting the exploratory and playful nature of this still novel tool. From SXSW’s own digital-centric Art Program to metaverse popups from Big 4 consulting firms like KPMG, every industry is looking for ways to expand on the continued merge of digital and physical realms. The rapid growth pace of technological innovations with artificial intelligence and virtual reality will continue to merge whether we’re ready for them or not.
Mixanthropy by Meichun Cai & Yiou Wang is a holographic art installation of an imaginary shapeshifting journey about the body in transition, visual, and behavioral. It encapsulates a deity's potential to glide between versatile body forms. This work draws the motif of animal-human metamorphosis and identity plurality from a variety of myths and cultural references, from the Greek pantheon to the East Asian bestiary reincarnations, coupling with cutting-edge technologies of motion capture, CGI, and self–trained AI.
Quantum Jungle by Robin Baumgarten, “an interactive art installation that playfully visualizes Quantum Physics concepts on a large wall filled with novel touch-sensitive metal springs and thousands of LEDs. It calculates Schrödinger's Equation to model the movement of a quantum particle, and demonstrates concepts such as superposition, interference, wave-particle duality, and quantum waveform collapse.”
Generative technologies like ChatGPT and OpenAI may seem like a distant trend for the architectural and interiors industries to incorporate into their projects, the rate of change makes them all the more imminent. But rather than shying away and negating their influence on our everyday world, it’s imperative that we find ways to embrace the possibilities and opportunities that these technologies open up for all of us. The art world has already been impacted by a few landmark innovations, including the growth of NFTs and the decentralization of art in the metaverse, as well as the unveiling of text-to-image generators like DALL-E.
It’s important for us to explore how we, as artists and designers, can use these tools to amplify our creative opportunities while still connecting to our physical realities.
Credit: Porsche
NFT artist 3D designer Vince Okerman unveils his latest collaboration with Porsche in “A Collective Effort to Bring Luxury Goods to Web3,” exploring the opportunities for the future of luxury collectibles and “how the Web3 movement is driving the democratization of luxury goods through NFTs".”
While conversations around how these technologies can replace working industries altogether, the human element to creative application will never go away; our world will always have a place–and need–for human expressions and perspectives. These digital tools are simply our new paintbrushes.
We’ve really only scratched the surface of the possibilities unveiled at SXSW, but what’s most exciting are endless ways that art can be incorporated into a richer human experience. From interior environments and brand activations to effective civic engagement and immersive digital applications, art really is everywhere – and we’re actively in the work to innovate with our clients to design a deeper and richer experience that can change lives with art.
Want to explore how you can apply these learnings to your own space or product? Let’s talk.
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