The annual SXSW festival opens today in Austin, Texas. A total of four installations will be featured prominently along with a series of art-based conferences in the event’s 36th edition, which this year runs until Sunday, March 19th. 

“The 2023 SXSW Art Program highlights three artists using mixed reality to explore Afro-Futurisms, holographics that morph between human and animal anatomy, and viewer interactivity beckoned by the use of Quantum Physics,” Aimée Everett, SXSW’s Art Program Curator, said in a statement. "These artists are beginning to interrogate these varied topics that impact society and are confronted on the SXSW stages.”

SXSW adds that each installation “showcases experiential and conceptual visual artworks that apply emerging technologies and immersive environments to spark discovery, inspiration, and connection.”

Scroll down to learn more about the 2023 Art Program.

Ancestral Archives by Josie Williams in association with EY metaverse lab and NEW INC. 

Description (per the artists): "Cultivating new connections between revolutionary leaders of the past and a future generation of critical thinkers, Ancestral Archives brings historically significant Black leaders, who inspired artist Josie Williams, to present-day communities in the form of virtual poets and authors: Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Octavia Butler. This work explores how generative AI can be enriched with the connections, experience, and knowledge of the past. In doing so, it leverages the learning capabilities of deep neural networks with Black culture to create a thoughtful, one-of-a-kind physical and digital experience, showcasing the power of harnessing technology for positive human impact and building a better world."

Mixanthropy by Meichun Cai and Yiou Wang

Description (per the artists): "Mixanthropy refers to the capturing of a deity’s potential for fluidity and change. Transitioning between animal and human states, Mixanthropy explores the divine hybridity through body transformations based on anatomical isomorphism, with mimetic skin textures echoing different environments with datasets generated by AI. The hybrid mixanthrope morphs into other bodies with mocap retargeted on human and nonhuman bodies. This work synchronizes motion, as an externalization of the intrinsic psyche, with 3D body deformation and metamorphosis into humanoids, chimeras, and otherworldly beings. In the process of creation, Meichun and Yiou performed a series of different animist movements while imagining themselves transitioning between their original species, Homo sapiens, and another species. Using motion capture technology of MIT Immersion Lab, Meichun and Yiou choreographed and personally provided movements to the shapeshifting beings."

Quantum Jungle by Robin Baumgarten

Description (per the artist): "Quantum Jungle is 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.

The design and construction of the hardware is a deliberate choice to complement the quantum scientific content: On one hand, the springs and lights correspond directly to the particle-wave duality of quantum particles, and on the other hand, the immediacy and tactility of the spring input are an intentional antithesis to how mysterious and beyond human grasp quantum effects are."

STONE SPEAKS by Nancy Baker Cahill x Sophia the Robot

Description (per the artist): "STONE SPEAKS is a monumental, narrative augmented reality artwork inspired by conversations between artist Nancy Baker Cahill and Sophia the Robot. Commissioned by Borderless Capital to reimagine climate crisis solutions, the artists exchanged thoughts about the accelerating climate crisis on our imperiled planet, and the adaptive potential of human-machine collaboration.

The work first appears as a massive particle field comprised of silicon and carbon elements. In a reverse Big Bang, the particle field contracts into a molten core, and then swells into a vibrant planet, textured with digital paintings created by Sophia as an extension of her conversation with Baker Cahill. The final resulting work speaks to the poetics of human-machine collaboration—what might be possible if they worked interdependently toward mutual survival and a robust restoration of the world’s natural ecosystems?"