At the South by Southwest festival this year I am invited to an after party on the East side of Austin, Texas, the proverbial barrio or town which is now rapidly morphing into the truly hip neighborhood. Condominiums, still modest, relatively understated structures, are popping up next to houses, coffee joints are sprouting beside taco shacks, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the high rises of downtown Austin cross the dividing line of Interstate 35. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth is supposed to be at this party, putting on an “Experimental” show, a term that floats around my mind with hazy definition but it sounds cool and edgy and everyone is excited so I figure I’m really going to see something here. I am tagging along with a DJ friend of mine and his circle of friends, who all look hot and interesting; like they all have their own clothing lines and speak five languages. At the party, the expanse of such a group widens; it’s a sea of scarves and blazers and black spectacles, of unwashed hair and smudged eyeliner and cock-eyed fedoras, with a couple of pet cats lounging around for good measure. Three people sit cross-legged on the floor in the living room, tweaking and rubbing knobs and dials on amplifiers, and strange bleeps and hoots resembling satellite communication from outer space emit from the speakers. I assume the trio are just tuning up, but after a few minutes, looking around at all the eager, dazzled faces of my contemporaries, I realize this is the show, this is meant to be music. When I turn to my friend for an explanation I am quickly shushed, and for half an hour I listen to such incredible noise that I yearn to hear the melody of one of the cats being strangled.
After the set, everyone gathers around to discuss what the music meant to them, what “journey” it took them on and how improvisational and wonderfully creative it all was. It only takes a moment to set in: holy crap, I’m at a Hipster party! I realize I am in one of America’s Hipster hotspots (Austin has been dubbed so alongside sister Hipster cities Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Silverlake, California.) But I wasn’t prepared for how much this [counter] culture has taken over the South by Southwest fest. They are everywhere. And with the Hipsters have come some new breeds of musicians to SXSW, a slew of DJ’s, Hip-Hop artists and Electronica favorers who never had a place before in the earlier alt-rock years of the festival. What is happening here is bigger than the “Hipster” trend. So many lines have been blurred in this modern culture that fashion, technology, music and communication all bleed together into an amorphous creation I like to call “Digitalsim.” I read somewhere that Digitalism can be defined as any art form that can be digitized, but what about life form? Have we not all been digitized? As a University of Texas alum, I have seen my share of SXSW festivals. Every March for the last 22 years, the movers, the shakers, the record deal makers, all that shimmers in the world of music, film and interactive technology fill Austin Marriotts and Sheratons and congest highways and sidewalks to participate in what is known as the world’s largest festival of its kind. For seven days the bands play, contracts are signed, panels discuss “the industry” and parties rage on, all in the name of closing the gap between the new talent and the business, the creative and those with the power to create.
South by Southwest is a living, breathing organism, and like any other organism it evolves. “Over 22 years, technology has had a huge effect on how we do business and what we can offer registrants,” says Elizabeth Derczo, press agent for SXSW. “Computers weren’t very common when the event began. Now registering for the event, booking a hotel, film submissions, band applications and MP3s are submitted online.” The mobile online registrants directory allows people to gain access to other registrants for networking purposes or just to meet and go see a band. There is also SXSW.mobi, where festival-goers can browse from their mobile device or web-enabled phone to get up-to-date schedules, mp3s, video clips, podcasts, news and more. Fans can also sign up for SXSW SMS text-messaging to be alerted when a band or film is playing. But Digitalism has affected the festival by an even broader scope. I attended a party hosted by two media monstrosities, where just a mention that “Facebook invited me” got one through the gate and into as many free vodka Redbulls as could be consumed. Locations of other parties were only given out via email threads or text messages; one could get on a VIP list with the click of a mouse. Meanwhile blogs kept the rest of the world informed on minute-to-minute festivals going-on. Hipsters themselves are products of Digitalism.
Friend sites like Myspace and Facebook have commercialized individualism, spawning the irony of a culture that considers itself a non-culture. No one would ever admit to being a Hipster. That’s the common thread that links the Hipsters together: they are all uniquely similar. All the thrift-store tees and skinny jeans, checkered Converse and tweed jackets, single earrings and uneven haircuts are meant to set one apart from the pack, but in the end there is an opposite effect. There is nothing more embarrassing than to show up to a Goldfrapp concert wearing the same day-glo onesie as someone else. And the music? Hip-hop had a play at SXSW this year largely due to the hiring of music programmer Matt Sonzala, who encouraged artists from the Houston hip-hop scene to perform at the festival. But Electronic music has ridden in merely on the wave of popularity. It is the music of our age because these songs aren’t recyclable–they are recycling in motion. These artists are musical anthropologists, committing themselves to music that is as permanent as Tower Records or as residual as a Magic Marker. And this is our music, transient and accessible, as dependable and solid as our morale and integrity. This is the age of blurred lines and sampled music; Of deceptive fashion. The age we digest one byte at a time- and it’s going down too easy to resist.
-Lauren Kent
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