Live Concert SXSW: Vienna & Austin, Texas

For the internationally renowned South by South West (SXSW) festival, the technology of a 360 video was used to show the live performance of a band performing simultaneously on two continents together.

About the client

sofasession gives musicians the opportunity to simplify creative exchange and making music together through modern technologies.

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The Challenge

Sofasession is an online community of musicians whose focus is to enable members to create and join virtual jam sessions, find other musicians to play with, and make friends in the process.

In 2017, internationally known film, interactive media, and music event SXSW invited sofasession to present their community as part of their official program. Given the pioneering nature of SXSW, sofasession wanted to show the functionality of their platform by presenting its full magic live and directly. For this purpose, they joined forces with Austrian artist Patricia Ziegler. The upcoming launch of her new album under the alias of Bitten By was the right occasion to achieve this goal. This point marked the beginning of our journey with this talented group of humans.

The Solution

For the first time in Austria, a band played simultaneously from two different continents as if sharing one and the same stage. Patricia Ziegler sang and played the synthesizer at the SXSW festival in Austin, while the musicians performed at the Wiener Konzerthaus in Vienna, joined together via live 360 video streaming. Each attendee at SXSW received a 360 video headset from which they could see and hear the musicians in Vienna performing live while being able to take the headsets off and see Patricia delivering the other piece of performance right in front of their eyes.

The Result

This video was Austria’s first appearance in the SXSW Festival 2017. It was highly revered by its originality of concept and by the fact that allowed people to experience a whole different level of perception –a first taste of what would feel like to be present in two different parts of the world at once, connected by the power of music and the help of VR.