Page 100 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

100in Austin, Texas, around March, it divides its attention between music, lm and interactive art, almost as if it were several festivals in one. Interdependent could be the word used to explain the link between these elds or sections.In addition to exhibitions and shows, it features lectures and debates between creators, thinkers and technology professionals (including company directors) on digital culture and trends such as privacy, women in technology... It has a large following of professionals in new technologies and attracts the interest of a broad spectrumof audiences. SXSW de nes itself as a group of conferences and festivals that ‘o er the unique convergence of original music, independent lms and emerging technologies’. What is more, aswe will see later on, its adoption of the latest technological innovations also extends to tasks such as managing and encouraging festival goers.Sónar festival (Barcelona, around mid-June)is an example of ongoing development in this eld. It started out in 1994 as the ‘International Advanced Music and New Media Art Festival’,a space that brought together electronic and digital music and multimedia arts and consisted of two di erent parts, Sónar Day and Sónar Night, held in di erent locations.But times change and the festival has evolved,as well as expanding internationally. In 2015its subtitle changed to ‘Music, Creativity & Technology’, though up until only a few years ago it was ‘Advanced Music and New Media Art’. For years it featured sections such as SonarCinema, as a separate division within Sónar Day, but the creation of Sónar D+ in 2013 powerfully marked the character and identity of the festival, at least the Day part.Conceived as a conference, it showcases technological innovations in the eld of new media, arts than are tending to be applied in music especially, through an exhibition space for technological creators and startups, techno- artistic installations and shows, hardware andsoftware workshops, and lectures. In short, it is a digital and emerging music festival that also extends to related areas, including the full range of digital culture itself (privacy, DIY, transmedia, the Internet of Things...).Mutek is another festival which, despite focusing on sound and music, is described as an ‘International Festival of digital creativity’. The reasons can be simple: where is the boundary between electronic music linked to audiovisual creation and digital experimentation? Many contemporary artists now operate beneath a broad umbrella of unbridled creativity and do not pledge loyalty to a single discipline or academic eld, and in this respect the festival adaptsand ‘mutates’ in accordance with new factorsin order to provide a speci c experience and, ultimately, ful l a speci c mission:MUTEK’s programming intends to create a sonic space that can support innovation in new electronic music and digital art. This is a world of constant evolution and incessant re nement – the ‘MU’ in MUTEK refers consciously to the notion of ‘mutation’. [About section on both the website and Facebook, taken from the English version of the former]1. NEW TECHNOLOGIES AS CONTENTOn the subject of hybrids, we might also mention festivals that take place in one or several physical spaces and on the Web. As stated in connection with #TwitterFiction Festival, we will gradually see the emergenceFocus: Use of New Digital Technologies at Cultural Festivals