Manchester Met heads to Texas to showcase digital creativity at South by Southwest
Manchester Met will be taking part in South by Southwest (SXSW) for the first time as part of the Manchester delegation to represent the city as thriving place for growth and creativity.
Running from March 7th to the 15th, SXSW is a significant event on the global calendar as thousands from all over the world attend to showcase music, film and interactive media.
Manchester, as one of the UK’s fastest growing cities, will take part again this year as it gains global recognition for its excellent research institutions, business models and, of course, a vibrant and iconic cultural scene which has spanned generations.
Professor Kirsty Fairclough, Research and Innovation Lead at SODA, Manchester Met, said: “We are thrilled to be showcasing SODA’s moving image-based research at SXSW. It’s a fantastic opportunity to present our work on a global stage and I am also delighted to be speaking on a panel which addresses Manchester’s status as the UK’s second city and its cultural and musical heritage.”
Also featuring at SXSW is Dead Already, a multidisciplinary project which focuses on the power of generative storytelling and time-travel. It is a co-creation led by SODA lecturers Damon Bannister, Micheal England, and John Lloyd.
The project focuses on the band Dead Already who have been lost to history. Using generative AI as a conduit, it allows the audience to explore the origins and fate of the band, upcycling now dead and redundant technologies; and exploring the fallibility of myth and lore in a post-truth world.
John Lloyd said: “SXSW is the perfect venue to share some of the prototype work we’ve been working on, it’s a dangerous thing raising the dead but someone has to do it!”