Digital Media PhD Student Monica Mendes in Austin for SXSW 2010

16 Apr 2010

Monica Mendes describes her experiences.

Visiting the University of Texas and attending the South by Southwest in Austin was a very intense experience, worth every moment! Time was the only scarce resource, indeed. The whole schedule of this prospective visit was gratefully intensive. Meeting with the UT faculty and researchers at the Communication College and the School of Information provided valuable feedback and recommendations on my research project.

The fascinating Radio-Television- Film department was unveiled through a comprehensive tour on the subjects and facilities offered to the students. I was also given the opportunity to visit the Videoranch 3D studios during a live performance with 3D scenery and avatars, and all the emotion of real-time!

There was a welcome evening, a wonderful get together to meet with UT researchers and Portuguese fellows in Austin, and it also was really nice to be part of the UT audience when our Portuguese fellows performed at the AMODA digital showcase.

The SXSW festival was another acquaintance from this awesome experience: sleepless nights/ days overtaken by compelling references at the conferences, workshops and networking during the interactive week, and also from the music field – an insane adventure worth the try!

Plans for the future naturally triggered from this visit, including ideas for workshops in video effects and optimization for real-time processing, as well as on directing and editing a trailer.

Austin is a simultaneously quiet and raving spacious city with an inspiring environment, and many, many trees – an enchanting setup for the RTiVISS research, and with interesting resources for the interactive installations in progress.

I’m looking forward to coming back, hopefully to work on film, real-time video and usability issues at UT, and also regarding a panel proposal focusing on real-time video in digital environments for the next SXSW Interactive.

To share this experience, I’ve posted at the research blog http://www.rtiviss.com/ and linked to the UT Austin www.flickr.com/groups/utportugal where you can also add your comments or ask any further specificities.