by Shilanda Woolridge

The SXSW Music and Film Festival is an institution that was born in the primordial soup of Austin culture. For many years Austin has been considered the "Live Music Capital of the World" and a hotbed of independent filmmaking activity. So it seems only natural that one of the biggest festivals in the honor of music and film would find its roots within our city limits.

In addition to the film and music activity, Austin has a lion's share of high-tech and multimedia firms. We have the old corporate mainstays like IBM, Apple, Dell, Motorola, and AMD. We also have the flashy interactive and gaming firms like HumanCode, FrogDesign, Origin, Digital Anvil, and FG Squared. Last year Austin was christened one of the worlds hottest high tech cities by Newsweek magazine.

Similar to the music and film festivals, the interactive festival is so deeply embedded in Austin culture that the opening event will be a self-guided open house through some of Austin's best multimedia production facilities and internet studios. Another important part of Austin culture is partying, and the interactive festival will give attendees plenty of opportunities. After the open house, GSDM will host the opening party where the winners of the Second Annual SXSW Web Site Competition and Texas Interactive Media Awards will be announced. The following three days will consist of a variety of activities like trade shows, keynote speakers, panels with over 30 cutting edge topics to choose from, and of courseplenty of parties and happy hours.

As the interactive festival is a part of the SXSW family, it's more a conference than a festival. The panels make up the bulk of the activities and orbit around four main categories: web business, web publishing, web entertainment, and the technological frontier. Unlike the music and film festivals, the interactive festival may not have much to offer the casual visitor. This may sound like a slam, but it's not. Anyone can walk up and experience a band or film they know nothing about. However, if one lacks knowledge of the Internet, the WWW, or interactive new media they may find themselves lost and frustrated. The panels topics are geared to people who are already up to their ears in development. So if one is completely new to interactive new media, it would be a good idea to go to the SXSW web site to scan the panel topics and let your intuition (not to mention your checking account) decide. On the other hand, the festival could serve as an excellent place to jump into the fray of cutting edge technology.

When most people think of interactive media, they think of web sites or 3D games like Quake or Myst. This is only scratching the surface of all there is to offer. The interactive festival isn't brand new, it's been around for a few years. However, this year's festival will be different because it will be the melting pot that brings all three SXSW events together. To understand how this will happen we'll have to examine the difference between"traditional" media and interactive new media. The traditional forms have always been very passive. We sit and listen to radio stations that are broadcast to us. We sit and watch television programs that are broadcast to us. We sit in mega-movie theater houses and watch films that are screened to us. Our level of interactivity is reduced to changing the channel or station, and deciding what movie we want to sit in front of.

Interactive media changes viewer into participant, giving them more control than ever before. The biggest example of this is perhaps in the recording industry. MPEG3 technology allows one to produce quasi-CD-quality audio files which have received very little attention until recently. Scores of web sites allow people with MP3 players to download and listen to MP3 files of their favorite songs. Better yet, with access to a CD burner they can make CDs of the songs. A quality high-speed CD burner costs about $200-300 bucks, well within reach of your average American consumer. So the recording industry and their lawyers are quickly trying to find a way to keep consumers paying $15 for a CD that cost $2 to produce. Two festival panels will cover digital music. Tuesday, March 16th, from 11-12:30pm, "The Digital Record Label" will explore the way interactivity has and will change music distribution. Later that day from 3:30-5pm, "MP3 & the Future of Intellectual Property" will separate fact from fiction about MP3s.

The juxtaposition of interactivity with music, film, and other media is what the SXSW Interactive festival is all about. The change in choices that viewers have are phenomenal. However, there are choices that interactive media gives to artists as well. Consider any of the independent musicians who will come to play this year. Now this artist has the ability to record her music and distribute it herself via her web site. She can sell her entire CD directly, or she can make MP3 files available for her fans to download and burn onto CDs themselves.

Like it or not, completely legal or not, the MP3 is here to stay and net savvy surfers will continue to download music. Those who are smart won't waste time in court trying to stop something they can't control; they'll adapt and make a profit. Musician Steve Mack will be giving away his tips and tricks for audio production when he presents "Producing High Quality Audio for the Internet" on Tuesday, March 16th, from 11-12:30.

What about the independent filmmakers -- how can they benefit from interactive media? Let's say a filmmaker has a 20 minute feature that he would like to shop around to distribution houses. He could digitize his film and put choice QuickTime video clips from the movie on his web site for people to view. QuickTime is the web standard for video, so most surfers will already have the QuickTime plug-ins installed on their web browser. If not, all it takes is a 15 minute time-out to download, install, and re-start the machine to properly equip their browser. Even better yet, if the filmmaker's ISP (Internet Service Provider) is equipped to serve streaming media via Real Audio/Video he could digitize the entire film and webcast it. Using Real Audio technology allows surfers to watch the film as it downloads instead of forcing them to wait for it download completely before it starts. Sunday, March 14th, from 3:30-5:30, the panel will discuss the latest that streaming video technology has to offer. On the other side of the filmmaking world, more and more big budget films are utilizing graphics for their special effects and stunts. This will be discussed Sunday, March 14th from 11-12:30pm during "Hollywood Gets Graphic."

The importance of Real Audio/Video technology grows exponentially because people don't like to wait. The World Wide Web didn't receive its nickname "the World Wide Wait" for nothing, so the ability to broadcast events via the web has generated a fair amount of interest. Many people at work listened to President Clinton's impeachment hearings using streaming Real Audio webcasts. Webcasts have become popular for hot news items and radio entertainment. The webcasting panel on Tuesday, March 14th, from 1:30-3 will cover broadcasting events over the Internet. Next from 3:30-5 will be a panel on "The Realities of Web Radio."

The few panels that were mentioned are just a fraction of what will be offered during the SXSW Interactive festival. It's exciting to see how the interactive new media can serve consumers and artists. Only in a place like Austin can art, media, and interactivity converge into one unit -- and only at a festival like SXSW Interactive.