SXSW Creative Industries Expo: Mediaweek guide to eye-catching brands, services and products

Posted on 16 March 2023

From Holograms to a virtual hug

The SXSW Creative Industries Expo is described as the convergence of industries on the cutting edge of technology, design, social good, health + wellness, and more. Mediaweek was on site at the Expo to provide a recap of the eye-catching brands, services and products on display.

The SXSW had five different pavilions:

Innovation
The Innovation pavilion focused on the trends defining tomorrow’s technologies and creative pursuits.

Global
The Global Pavilion explored the spectrum of worldwide initiatives, trends, creators, and tastemakers. Attendees explored ideas from across the globe in a hands-on environment.

Social Impact
The Social Impact Pavilion concentrated on businesses that have implemented or built initiatives to secure a more positive impact socially, economically, and environmentally.

Entertainment
The Entertainment Pavilion showcased exhibitors on the cutting-edge of industries like film, music, gaming and more.

Health + Wellness
The Health & Wellness Pavilion featured companies looking to improve a person’s quality of life through various products, services, and ideas.

Mediaweek’s Highlights

Proto shows off hologram Tech (that doesn’t photograph well)

Proto demonstrated its interactive holographic communications platform. This device, called Epic, is a human-sized “portal” that produces a lifelike person in a hologram, letting people “beam” themselves to a location thousands of miles away and interact with people there. This has real-world implications such as doctor visits.

We had a great time at #SXSW this past weekend with Sampath who sat down for a few questions! We also demoed some groundbreaking tech, including the Razer Edge 5G, the Proto Hologram, & more! #VTeam pic.twitter.com/AVKDvOiaDI
— Inside Verizon (@InsideVerizon) March 14, 2023

The Water Arch

An immersive art installation that draws attention to the ever-increasing use of clean drinking water, created by DROPSTUFF MEDIA, a Dutch media arts collective.

The work is an abstract interpretation of a classic Dutch barrel organ. By turning a big wheel, the organ comes to life and plays songs from long-forgotten days, while water is pumped up through a system of tubes and bubbles. The water eventually collects in a large container above your head. At 36 gallons the water is released. Protected by a large transparent dome you experience in an instant how much water we use daily. The music used in the installation is an adaptation of a recording of a famous barrel organ from the 1950s and 1960s, sourced from the archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Shutterstock booth for SXSW Coffee Break

This was one of the more stunning displays with the large illuminated Shutterstock cube being a visual standout at the expo. Guests were able to have a coffee break while learning about Generative Ai.

dentsu’s Unnamed Sensations

dentsu Japan showcased three new cutting-edge experiential innovations featuring prototype experiences, the theme of the three works was to explore the extension of touch, texture and small senses. dentsu’s aim with these new innovations is to find the boundary lines between digital and physical, using artificial muscles, image recognition, and AR technology.

Hugtics

Hugtics is a technology that you can really feel with a new hug experience that hugs yourself. When the experiencer wears a vest woven with artificial muscles and hugs the human-shaped sensor, the feeling of their own hug is fed back to their own body in real time. In addition, by displaying changes in brain waves, the mental impact is also visualized. You can also record the hug itself, deliver it to a remote location, or playback the hug with your loved one.

Phantom Snack

Phantom Snack is a new chewing experience system that makes you feel like you are eating even though you are not eating. When you chew food without putting anything in your mouth, the bone conduction earphones will feed back the crunchy chewing sound and vibration according to the movement of the jaw detected by facial image recognition. Furthermore, by linking images and an aroma diffuser, it is a system that gives you a chewing experience as if you were really eating a snack. The various “chewing experiences” included chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, salads, and phantom sweets.

Transcentdance

Transcentdance is dance AR content that visualizes the “smell” that you want to remember via Augmented Reality content. By adding time and space information to smells and combining them with moving dance, dentsu has created entertainment that expresses “smells”, which are said to be difficult to visualize because of their instantaneous information. When the user selects a “smell,” the sensor reads its components, and the “smell” dances in real time as a character according to the type and component ratio of the scent analyzed by AI.

Bird Buddy

This is one for Mediaweek contributing editor Greg “Sparrow” Graham. Bird Buddy is an AI-powered camera feeder that notifies you of bird visitors, captures their photos and organizes them in a beautiful collection. The display at the Expo gave visitors a first-hand look at this new technology.

SXSW Sydney

It was also fun to see Sydney represented with the first SXSW Sydney conference coming in October!

Feature Image: A SXSW design by Mytaverse, a cloud-based platform for fully immersive 3D multiplayer experiences

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