Serendipity and Subtlemobs

Yesterday, at SXSW Interactive, I realized how serendipitous (and potentially harmonious) your encounters could become, even among the chaotic mission to attend tightly scheduled and provocative talks on everything from transmedia to DIY digital higher education — and then document it all.

I had originally set out, flipcam-in-hand, Moleskine-in-pocket to ask the SXSW veterans what advice they had for a eager newbie, like myself, who wanted desperately to squeeze every meaningful drop out of the sessions, while simultaneously engaging with attendees (in the spirit of social, of course) without becoming a conference train wreck.

Ironically, my attempt at video crowd-sourcing was quickly thwarted with the first person that I approached.

To my delight, I happened upon Duncan Speakman, a UK based artist who will be speaking on the panel Pervasive Games and Playful Experiences: Rendering the Real World. With a background in sound engineering, his work now examines how we use sound to locate ourselves in personal and political environments. Seeking out the poetics of daily life, he works to create socially relevant experiences that engage audiences emotionally and physically in the public sphere. Duncan creates this type of disruptive realism through Subtlemobs. Subtlemobs are the inverse of flashmobs because, according to Duncan, it’s about integrating with a social or physical space, not taking it over.

After staging shows in London, Amsterdam, and Tokyo, Duncan was inspired to stage an impromptu Subtlemob right here in Austin on Monday evening. Duncan invites SXSWesters to participate in this immersive audio experience.

All you need to do is download the MP3 composed of melodic music and narrative, and follow the instructions as you walk around Austin “watching the world around you as it becomes a living cinema.”

(Duncan explains his piece 'always something somewhere else' created on the mscape system).