The final lineup reflected the organizers’ commitment to diversity, not just in the range of ethnicities present, but also in the contrasting musical styles represented. “Just because we were programming artists from the seven banned countries didn’t mean they all had to play traditional music,” says Froebel. “The final lineup had amazing scope. Yes, there was the traditional Iraqi music of Dena El Saffar and Mohsen Namjoo’s blend of ancient Persian music and contemporary blues, but there was also Bassel & The Supernaturals’ infectious neo-soul and the hip hop of Libyan artist Kayem.”

 Any concerns that ContraBanned, with its serious message, might conflict with the St. Patrick’s Day party atmosphere at SXSW were quickly dispelled. The positive reaction of the audience was clear, as the powerful stories of the assembled artists were shared amid a spirit of celebration. Iranian-American artist Mamak Khadem brought everyone together in a traditional circle dance. South Sudanese rap artist and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal fired up the crowd with his anthem “My Power.” Naked from the waist up and adorned with white war paint, he spoke out against anger: “Those who have voted for Trump have fear… we will win because we fight with love.”

 Somali-Canadian sister act, Faarrow (Iman and Siham Hashi) provided the night’s emotional highlight. The pop duo, who escaped the civil war in their homeland as young girls, now act as spokespeople for the UN Refugee Agency. Sporting t-shirts emblazoned with the slogans “Refu-She!” and “Extra Power,” they electrified the audience with their cover of the Fugees’s “Ready or Not.” “Shout out to the Fugees for making it OK to be a refugee, and making it cool” said Iman.

 Do one-off events like ContraBanned have lasting impact? Are artists guilty of capitalizing on political crisis to gain exposure, as some skeptics assert? When questioned, most of these artists expressed a desire to use their music to give voice to the faceless bogeyman that the Trump administration is targeting.

 “I am not here because I want to be, “ said Emmanuel Ja. “People are still dying in South Sudan. There are children in refugee camps. Dead bodies talk to me. I can’t run away from the responsibility of representing my country ... I see my life as a work of art that I create to spark consciousness.”

What is the role of the artist in turbulent times? The election of Donald Trump posed this question to the world, sparking a wave of protest as people laid down their smartphones, pressed pause on Netflix and invoked the spirit of the sixties by going on marches and writing protest songs.

 This was the underlying question behind the ContraBanned: #MusicUnites showcase at SXSW 2017. Conceived as a response to Trump’s divisive travel ban, ContraBanned embodied the idea that while politics divides, art unites. Musicians with roots in the seven nations banned by Trump’s since-overturned January executive order took to the Palm Door on Sixth stage to celebrate their cultures, share experiences and send the message that hate will not triumph over harmonies.

 The showcase was the brainchild of immigration lawyer Matthew Covey and award-winning radio host Marco Werman, who worked for six weeks to bring their idea to fruition. The aim was to show America what it would be missing if voices from these nations were silenced.

 “We hadn’t done concert promotion for a few years, but the first thought that came to my mind when I heard about the travel ban was ‘how do we respond?’ ” said Covey. “I felt the same way many Americans did ... How can I use my skills and contacts to find a meaningful response to what my government is doing?”

 Fusing politics and music is nothing new for Covey and Werman, who have both spent their long careers exposing injustice and championing new talent. While Covey has fought behind the scenes to help artists obtain visas to travel and perform in the U.S., Werman’s weekly show on Public Radio International, The World, showcases stories of activism and sounds of protest from around the globe.

 ContraBanned was actually based on an idea the two had during the final days of the George W. Bush administration when, over a few beers, they hit upon the idea for an “Axis of Evil” showcase. “We thought it would be fun to bring together artists from the countries deemed part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ [after 9/11] by the Bush administration,” remembers Covey. “But we couldn’t find a North Korean artist who we could bring to the U.S., so the idea faded. After the news of the travel ban broke, I called Marco and said ‘now’s the time.’ ”

 An advisory board of industry experts was assembled to help book performers, raise funds and handle promotion. The tight timescale created huge challenges, but many people, such as festival producer Boo Froebel, were happy to devote time and energy to a project with such a unifying purpose. Early on, the decision was taken to feature artists with roots in the banned countries who were already resident in the U.S. or Canada. Plans to bring the Iranian electronic artist, Ash Koosha, over from London had to be shelved after issues with his visa.

 A Kickstarter campaign was launched in late February, alongside private fundraising efforts, to generate enough money to cover all the artist and production costs. A crowdfunding target of $15,000 in 15 days was set and quickly exceeded. “I came up with a budget that was a bit daunting,” admits Froebel. “We couldn’t in good conscience ask these artists to [pay their own way] as they weren’t already planning to be at SXSW. This was a response to a lot of hate and misunderstanding directed at them; it would have been adding insult to injury if we had not been able to cover their expenses and pay them a small fee.”

see headsets of the size of the Daydream doing room-scale VR, as spending 1.5 hours in Vive or Oculus is not something I think many people would want to do.”

 This is the rub of Virtual Reality’s current market, and one of a few growing pains the emerging industry has experienced. While consumers can access VR content that allows them to experience full movies on Netflix or sit courtside at an NBA game via Samsung’s Gear VR platform, the bulk of what VR creators are working on now are short-form.

 As seen at SXSW, these often include experimental, experiential projects, such as Félix & Paul Studios’ collaborations with Cirque du Soleil, or “Spatium,” based on the work of avant-garde hat designer Philip Treacy ... as well as educational offerings such as “Buzz Aldrin’s Cycling Pathways To Mars” or the films that are part of the Oculus VR for Good project. For creators like Rogers, this short-format phase is more a feature than a drawback during the VR industry’s adolescence. Short projects allow financiers to play around in the space.

 “There are the likes of Viacom NEXT who funded our last project, ‘Chocolate,’ and were an awesome support base,” he explains. “Viacom NEXT is an R&D part of Viacom (parent company of Paramount Pictures, MTV, etc.) who look at future technologies and support content creators like us to bring our projects to fruition, and they understand that revenue returns are limited right now (especially room-scale), but they see the bigger picture and so the more people that see this, the better.”

 Which brings to light VR’s other growing pain: fragmentation of content distribution. To hear Rogers tell it, this is something the VR market will need to work out before it can ever reach the wide audiences enjoyed by traditional film and television. “We watch movies and TV shows on Netflix,” he says. “And we watch music videos on YouTube; we need these type of platforms for VR ASAP.”

 Between the wide variety of headsets available to consumers—from Oculus to Samsung Gear to Vive and the even wider variety of platforms—there is some mystery about how VR will evolve into a form of mainstream entertainment. It is not, however, difficult to see that creators like Rogers and the folks at 5th Wall, who created “THE MUMMY Zero Gravity VR Experience,” are creating immersive, artful content.

 As Rogers explains, the unknown is what may be the most exciting thing for creators: “We are taking this blank canvas and doing our best to create amazing work that hopefully will help define this new medium. That’s pretty exciting!”

“It might not be the most comfortable situation, but perhaps it will be worth it …” This was likely not an uncommon thought for the early adopters as they donned headsets and tested out the many Virtual Reality experiences offered at SXSW 2017. In what is assuredly a growing year-over-year trend, this year’s Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality track and Virtual Cinema exhibition featured creators and technologies of various kinds, from film to interactive, gaming, music and even sports, each vying for the opportunity to transport audiences to a new and beautiful world.

 This author found himself in one of the furthest-flung ballrooms of the Austin Convention Center, wedged into a circular pod chair, the kind one might find in the home of grandparents who have not updated their decor since the 1960s. This chair, manufactured by a company called Positron, is built for the express purpose of delivering 360-degree, immersive cinematic virtual experiences without the added benefit of motion sickness. Twenty of these Positron Voyagers were built expressly for the SXSW debut of “THE MUMMY Zero Gravity VR Experience,” an experimental marketing activation from Universal Pictures. The result is a virtual ride with Tom Cruise and the crew of the new film as they shoot a scene from on a Zero-G simulating airplane. VR passengers feel the loss of gravity with the twisting and turning of the Positron chair as Cruise, never one to do any stunt halfway, executes a daring escape from a plane while it plummets from the sky.

 Despite the mild discomfort of the one-size-fits-all chair solution, the several-minute-long demo is an impressive show of VR’s potential, a sort of DVD extra on steroids. But where it shows off the broad, impressive power of immersion that VR offers, there is also a hint of where the VR market has encountered some limitations. Did we enjoy our epic plane ride with Tom Cruise on the set of his next blockbuster? Sure. Would we want to sit in a 360-degree moving chair, heads encompassed by a headset and 3D audio headphones, for the length of an entire film? That seems less certain.

 “VR experiences and short-form video in documentary or stories certainly are the natural fit for the Oculus and Vive,” explains Adam Rogers, an executive producer for Gentle Manhands, a company that brought its latest project, a digital music video experience called “Chocolate,” to SXSW and was part of the Virtual Cinema program.

 “To create room-scale immersive movies of a feature length,” says Rogers. “I think that will be based on advancements with headsets, where we

ingrained in us from the time we are very young and is very different to our senses than reading on a screen,” reasons Sax.

 Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review contributor and author of HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict and SXSW 2017 speaker, agrees: “Delving into a physical book is a more immersive experience than looking at a screen—it creates a separate space for your brain. Personally, I spend so much of my day staring at screens that picking up a book is a relief.”

 In the film world, though there has undoubtedly been a move toward more widespread use of digital cameras and screening on digital formats, many filmmakers continue to shoot and develop their projects on tried-and-true celluloid film, just like their predecessors did a century ago. Last year at SXSW, no movies were screened using celluloid prints, but in 2017, five titles arrived in old-school film canisters and took advantage of the film projection capabilities of three Austin theaters.

 One of those films, Most Beautiful Island, (directed by its writer and star Ana Asensio), won the Grand Jury Prize in the 2017 SXSW Film Awards’ Narrative Feature competition. According to both Asensio and cinematographer Noah Greenberg, the choice of using film was made to evoke the look and feel of classic New York City-set films from the 1970s.

 “At a foundational level with film, there’s the look of the grain and the color that happens organically in a different way because it’s a mechanical process,” explains Greenberg. “There’s an aesthetic appeal to that that isn’t found in digital, and that in very subtle ways makes you feel like it’s more cinematic.”

 “Something is lost when you see something digitally,” says Gabe Klinger, director of Porto, another of SXSW 2017’s celluloid films. “It’s like a reproduction of a painting. It’s just not the same thing ... We didn’t have to do any kind of elaborate color correction to really get the images to pop. The results are there. With digital, you have to do a lot of tinkering, a lot of experimenting.”

 “I don’t look at things the same way on a computer,” says Noel Wells, director, writer and star of Mr. Roosevelt, which was shot on film and brought home two 2017 SXSW Film Awards. “I don’t care about them as much, and I want things to matter. I think people feel like it’s nostalgia, but I think it just literally feels better.”

 Still, analog devotion requires a commitment on the part of creators to overcome its added costs and inconveniences. Linna describes the extensive waits she has had to recently endure for pressing plants to deliver Norton’s releases, due to backlogs caused by vinyl’s increased demand. Because of the closing of most film labs, Dustin Defa, director of Person to Person, explained that he had to have a crew member physically drive the film twice a week from New York City to Baltimore to be processed. But despite these hurdles, analog’s advocates remain devoted to the personal aspect of their chosen formats.

 “I think the more things transition to computers, the more anxious and confused I am as a person,” says Wells. “When I start doing things that are physical, and I can touch them, it just makes more sense to me.”

 “Creativity is not always the most efficient thing,” explains Sax. “Sometimes the way to achieve it makes you work a little harder, make certain sacrifices ... whether it’s shooting on film, or creating something that can’t be instantaneously shared. Sometimes that’s more lasting because it connects with people and is more meaningful.”

The innovation superhighway is littered with forgotten media formats and devices. With the continuing advances in digital technology promising the convenience of being able to store and access one’s entire media library on one small device, the future seems destined to be written on screens.

 When the first iPhones and similar devices started becoming commonplace roughly a decade ago, the chorus of public opinion quickly predicted that single unit, stand-alone media formats such as records or books would soon join 8-tracks, DATs and Betamax videotapes in the dustbin of history. Yet, instead of shriveling up and blowing away during the ensuing years, the tried-and-true analog formats are holding on, and even surging in popularity compared to their digital counterparts.

 In the music realm, digital downloads and compact discs have both experienced double-digit declines in recent sales years. On the contrary, alongside the rising popularity of paid streaming services, sales of vinyl LPs are burgeoning.

 According to the Nielsen Music Year-End Report, vinyl sales in 2016 rose to 13 million units sold (compared to fewer than one million units sold in 2007), which marked an increase for the 11th consecutive year. For 2017, vinyl sales are projected to approach the $1 billion mark for the first time since the 1980s. In the U.K., vinyl sales (as compiled by British Phonographic Industry) reached a 25-year high in 2016, with consumers spending more on records than digital downloads. So what is driving this trend?

 “Audiophiles will say there’s a ‘warmer’ sound to vinyl which is a good word for it, but to me there’s a way that a real record sounds that’s familiar ... close and personal,” says Miriam Linna, co-founder and operator of the Norton Records label, which has continually released vinyl since 1986. But although there have always been vinyl devotees and audiophiles long arguing the merits of LPs and 45s, the sharp increase in sales is also being fueled by younger listeners.

 “Most people under 25 have listened to music on some kind of handheld device for their entire lives. They have access to all the music they own on that device, but at some point it just becomes wallpaper,” explains Greg Ellis, owner and operator of Austin’s Groovers’ Paradise Record Shop, and a veteran of the record retail and distribution business for more than 40 years. “Vinyl doesn’t allow you that luxury. Every 20 minutes or so, you have to make a decision … are you going to flip that record over or pick another or do something else? And you become more engaged with music than you have been your whole life, and once you become engaged with music, it’s got you.”

 “If you go around to music festivals and ask the 20-something-year-olds, a significant number of them own a turntable,” says journalist David Sax, who spoke at SXSW 2016 and is author of the book The Revenge of Analog. “They’re going to physical records not out of a sense of nostalgia, but on their own merits, and as a complement to the streaming services that they all listen to.”

 But the renewed interest isn’t just in music. On the publishing front, the eBook revolution that was supposed to render printed books and magazines useless has stalled. According to data from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Nielsen BookScan, eBook sales have dropped more than 10% since 2013, while print sales have risen each of the last three years. And tellingly, the steepest drop in eBooks has been in the children’s and young adult categories, indicating that younger readers still prefer print.

 “The experience of reading on the page is so

 A group of creatives-in-residence also attended the hackathon, helping teams to generate ideas. Digital artist Andrew Jones, musician and activist Kiran Gandhi (also known as Madame Gandhi), music hacker Chris Hughes (Network of One), film producer Tara Ansley, DJ Evan Bartholomew, and the aforementioned Block, were all members of this diverse collective.

 “I really enjoyed the spirit that the hackathon had, bringing in some actual artists in the industry and being able to listen to their challenges,” said Harper of their participation.

 Madame Gandhi—who is, among many other titles, M.I.A.’s drummer—worked with a team of nine hackers to create “EntertainAR,” an AR app connected to Gandhi’s “The Future is Female” t-shirts. The app allows her fans to view a range of exclusive material, including 360-degree videos, by scanning the words on the t-shirt with their smartphones. The product serves two complementary purposes: to connect Gandhi’s merchandise with her online presence while giving fans access to exclusive content. “They really came to know my brand very well,” Gandhi said of the EntertainAR team.

 Arpit Gupta, who organized the country’s largest VR hackathon, “Reality Virtually,” with MIT, served as a mentor and product manager for the team, which included a range of developers, designers and VR experts. “It had a great mix of people,” he said.

 They built EntertainAR with the VR tools Vuforia and Unity, Gupta says. It uses “marker-based technology,” which trains the app to recognize the pattern on the t-shirt, and then trigger an augmented reality experience. The app also has the potential to scan other merchandise such as CDs and vinyl records.

 The day after the hackathon, music and tech worlds collided in real time, when the EntertainAR team tested the app at Madame Gandhi’s SXSW showcase. There, they worked as Gandhi’s merch team, selling merch while demoing the product and collecting fans’ information. “None of us had ever been behind a merchandise table,” said Gupta, “So having that experience and getting to talk to real fans in that setting was incredible.”

 Several members of the group have stayed in contact, Gupta says. They plan to work with freelance developers to add a couple of new features, and hope to commercialize the app in the near future. There’s a lot of potential for AR/VR innovations in the realm of live performance, he thinks.

 If the work of SXSW’s hackathon teams is anything to go by, this potential may be realized soon.

The worlds of immersive technology and music converged in a big way at SXSW 2017’s panels, screenings and performances. Nowhere was this clearer than at the official SXSW Hackathon. Formerly branded as the SXSW Music Hackathon, this year the event expanded to include VR/AR and film categories. Many teams, including several winning ones, created apps that blended all three, using VR and AR technology to enhance the experiences of both musicians and fans.

 The winners of the music category, Ctrl^3 (pronounced control cubed), connected Merge VR’s new “Holo Cube” with the live performance and recording software Ableton Live to build an interactive music creation platform for producers. Using the Holo Cube, Ctrl^3 allows producers to control Ableton’s synthesizers and audio filters, along with light effects in up to five dimensions. The goal, the team says, is to “push Ableton users to a new level of musical creativity.”

 Following the hackathon, Ctrl^3’s creators Tom Brückner, from Germany, and Paul Wehner, who is based in California, met up in Los Angeles to discuss plans for a beta version of the product. They hope to test it with active producers and musicians including David Block (The Human Experience), who served as a creative-in-residence at the hackathon.

 Another team, “Cubestrument” used the Holo Cube to create a virtual reality musical instrument, with several different, customizable “audio profiles.”

 In the VR/AR category, the winning team, Space+Time Studio, built a platform that will help bring AR technology into the realm of live performance. “It’s a prototyping tool for mixed reality performance designers,” describes Max Harper, one half of the Boston-based team. “The stage of the future,” he says, will feature a range of holographic designs, including dance troupes and other effects that can be controlled by the performer.

 Space+Time Studio will allow these future designers and artists to plan out a performance, and see what it will look like, using VR a model of the real performance space. It will also allow performers to integrate IoT (Internet of Things) technology to control lighting and other physical elements of the stage design.

 Harper and his teammate, Amedeo Mapelli, created the platform using Mapelli’s own software called “Simmetri,” which is designed for interactive art builders and virtual reality storytellers. The two had met briefly before the hackathon, when Harper used Simmetri for a music video, but they cemented their working dynamic at SXSW. “It is definitely a kind of made at SouthBy relationship,” says Harper. The two have continued to collaborate on projects back home in Boston.

 With his infinite wisdom and broken English, Mohan embodied a real-life Yoda. “The things that came out of Mohan’s mouth, ‘cloth paper dreams, the city is made of these things … Shanti, peaceful life for everyman, I want’, were beautiful,” says Davis.

 Now four years later, Davis is going back to India, seeking Mohan and more importantly, the wisdom that resides within him. “It was never my plan … It is now,” says Davis. “I’m going back to find Mohan somewhere between the heavens and the earth.”

 Davis, along with director Brad Feeser of Hearty Films, have already begun working on a feature-length documentary about their upcoming odyssey, titled The Man from Mathura. And with a plot as lofty as the heavens Mohan lives under, they acknowledge the challenge in front of them. “We’re going to this place where millions of people live, to find one person who lives on the streets,” he explains.

 But this is where the latest godwink comes into play. “I Googled festivals in Mathura and two came up,” Davis says. “One’s in August when we’ll be there, Janmashtami, celebrating the birthday of Lord Krishna.” Davis figures that if anyone will be celebrating Krishna’s birthday, it will be Mohan.

 If they succeed, will it be coincidence or serendipity? Feeser believes it is tiptoeing destiny’s fine line: “It’s not if we find Mohan, it’s when.”

 When they do, Davis will give him a box with a gift inside. “What do you give to a man that has nothing and everything at the same time? He chose nothing.” he says. “The answer is in the box.”

To find out what’s in the box, follow The Man From Mathura on Facebook.

“Here’s a godwink for you,” says Greg Davis in a mellow Texas accent.

 Godwinks are those serendipitous coincidences that can happen in life, and Davis, a world-traveling National Geographic Creative photographer who exhibited his work at SXSW 2017 as part of the first-ever Podcast Stage, embraces them to guide his work.

 The one he’s talking about on this particular occasion is the impetus for his latest film project —a journey to find Mohan, a Hindu sadhu, or holy man, whom Davis photographed in 2013 during the Kumbh Mela religious fair in India.

 Chronicled in Davis’s short film, Cloth Paper Dreams, Kumbh Mela occurs once every 12 years and is the largest religious pilgrimage in the world. One hundred million people journey to the confluence of the three holiest Hindu rivers—the Ganges, Yamuna and Sarasvati—to bathe and drink the water, which is believed to cleanse sins and break the cycle of reincarnation.

 During Kumbh Mela, in a sea of millions on the banks of the Ganges, Davis saw Mohan waving to him. Davis sat down with Mohan and the two began chatting. When asked where he lived, Mohan said, “The sky is my roof, the land is my room.”

 Beyond intrigued, Davis needed to know more. “I live near the birthplace of Lord Krishna,” said Mohan. By chance, Davis knew that place as Mathura but thought little of it at the time.

 Over the next three days, Davis learned how Mohan, an only child, had come from a family of wealth, given it all up, as all sadhus do, and devoted himself to Brahman (God).