Image byCaitlin McGarry
Austin is already a uncanny spot , but during South by Southwest , the weirdness grows exponentially . bounteous brand hungry for attention and tiny startups face to incline the hot new app contend to see who can capture the SXSW audience of techies and creatives . The brand bearing was more subdue this year than in the past times , but that did n’t make the stunts any less bananas . Here are the 8 that made me stop in my tracks .
Image byLeah Yamshon
There ’s really nothing creepy-crawly than walking down the street and running into a passel of handmaids croak , “ Praise be , ” in unison . Some SXSW attendee did n’t connect the Department of Transportation between Hulu ’s version of Margaret Atwood ’s insanely safe and extremely relevant novelThe Handmaid ’s Talewith the hatful of gentlewoman in red , but it was the perfect stunt nonetheless .
Image byAdam Patrick Murray
Bob Odenkirk had a huge comportment at SXSW as a featured speaker and after - minute comedy performer , but if you did n’t catch a coup d’oeil of Odenkirk in Austin , the next near thing was a meal at Los Pollos Hermanos . The fictional chicken smear fromBreaking Badtook over a local eatery to boost the third season ofBetter Call Sauland sling fried chicken to hungry SXSW attendees . We heard the place ran out of Gallus gallus and was only serving French fries , but it ’s the thought that reckon .
When I first determine Carvana ’s stupendous “ railcar vending motorcar , ” I had no musical theme why this company I ’ve never hear of would put a automobile in a vending motorcar . But it turns out that what seems like a preposterous stunt is an actual used - car franchise with a location in Austin . Carvana really does operate car hawk machines , though they ’re not exactly like the one than the one that bug out up across the street from the Austin Convention Center . Instead , you pick out a machine to buy online , then head to Carvana ’s franchise to pick it up by inserting a coin in a huckster simple machine . That spark the auto ’s declension in a glass elevator . This is a altogether flakey way to buy a railcar , but I would ’ve never know about it had I not seen this gigantic vending simple machine with a car inside , so . Kudos , Carvana .
Walking down Congress Avenue in downtown Austin , you typically see tall bureau building and cool bars . During SXSW , you also range into a jumbo wave - bait pond , thanks to TNT’sAnimal Kingdom . The show set up a FlowRider surf simulator and invite folks off the street to twit the waves ( or just have some beer and watch other people fall over ) . TNT even provide bathing cause and wetsuits because they expected people to come to a rule unprepared for surfriding . They were right on the money .
Image byGoogle
Google came to SXSW with two experiences for conference - goers : A demonstration of the Google Jacquard coaction with Levi ’s , and a # myAndroid truck to mime the effects of the # MyAndroid Taste Test feature it just launched . Taste Test work by require you a few query to come up with the perfect combination of launchers , wallpapers , and icon gang . The truck was bedight out in LED lights that you could customize just like a headphone . It was n’t the weird thing at SXSW , not by a long dig , but it was a strange manner to advance a small Android feature .
The first matter many of us experience as we channelize west toward the Austin Convention Center was a giant white American buffalo with Brobdingnagian horns . “ WTF is that ? ” I said under my breathing time as my cab cruised down Cesar Chavez . Then I saw the signage : American Gods . It ’s a new show from Starz based on the Good Book by Neil Gaiman , and it premieres next month , which mean it ’s premier time for a SXSW tie - in . The buffalo was n’t exactly an synergistic experience , but Starz did bid people to sit near the furry animate being and excite their equipment . Or beg to it — whatever . Only at Confederate States by Southwest .
Image byBravo TV via Instagram
I did n’t see any actual alien dancers on the street of Austin , but Bravo did send a flash mob of 60 - odd half - defenseless merrymaker downtown to promote its new realism TV show , Stripped . The engage models went out in the rainfall with transparent umbrellas and the hashtag # Stripped color on their stomachs to get up up interest for the show , which micturate dissident abandon everything they own for 21 days . The stunt raised some eyebrow and made newspaper headline , but we ’ll see if anyone in reality tunes in .
Will golem ever become indistinguishable from human beings , as sci - fi films would suggest ? Maybe , but we ’re not exactly penny-pinching — at least not if the creepy robot conversation I see at SXSW is any indication . Osaka University bring two automaton to Austin to show off technology that powers automaton - to - robot conversations . Eventually that engineering science can be used to support human - to - robot conversation , but it looks like this is still in its former days . The robots talk in , well , robot voice , and their conversation was stilted and about a totally unnatural topic , urban horticulture vs. rural farming . I ’m intrigued by where this engineering could go , but this demo was the creepiest thing I envision at SXSW .
