SXSW Eco Coverage: Fun With DJ Spooky and DIIV
While a lot of the panels at SXSW Eco were full of considered approaches about the future of the planet – and the need to make changes about how we live on this planet – there was also fun to be had.
During “The Intersection of Art + Sustainability” Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) talked with Maranda Pleasant, Publisher and Editor-in-chief of Origin magazine about the magazine (Miller himself is the Executive Editor of Origin). Miller – a superhuman force who claims to only have 24 hours in a day but who clearly accomplishes more than someone operating under mortal time limits – discussed his free app, his popular hardback offering “The Book of Ice” and talked about going to Antarctica to listen to the ice field.
“All I can tell you is that I’m half-Jamaican, so that was crazy cold,” Miller said during the morning panel when he discussed his trip to Antarctica.
It might be our imagination running icily wild, but when Miller’s quickly-silenced ringtone sounded during his talk, it sounded a lot like ice clinking in a glass!
On the Thursday evening of SXSW ECO, Miller presented his modern ice-centered symphony Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica at the State Theater on Congress Avenue. A sparse, symphonic composition, it was presented with multiple projections and a light show that extended off the stage and into the auditorium of the vintage theater.
Another energetic panel at the SXSW Eco conference included the very fit, all-male snowboarder/skateboarder panelists of Drink Water. The dudes electrified the crowd gathered for their basement presentation, which focused on the need for the professional sports industry to part ways from the sugar-water-and-electrolytes-in-a-can industry.
The SXSW Eco/Fader closing party was headlined by the quickly emerging Brooklyn band DIIV, the artistic offspring of Beach Fossils guitarist Zachary Cole Smith.
Watching DIIV’s video’s—and given the mellow vibe of SXSW Eco—one might expect that their set would be mellow, harmonic and possibly twee. One would be very wrong.
Given the nature of the conference, watching the skinny dudes of DIIV in the tiny space of #2600 was a lot like plugging into a formerly untapped source of alternative energy and watching it metaphorically blow up every light bulb in the room; seeing those Brooklyn boys ripping through their set was much watching a tiger tear through a steak. It was seeing creatures do what they were meant to do.
