A "Lego Man" created by a SXSW attendee

Yes, SXSW Interactive folks are here to create and learn about the latest and greatest in technology and Web design. But sometimes it takes visiting your childhood roots to bring out that creative spark.

Every year inside the Austin Convention Center you’ll find the Lego corner. It’s exactly what the name implies, a corner piled high with Legos of all kinds for kids and adults to play with. In many cases, great pieces of little “Lego art” emerge from the pile.

I thought I’d share some photos of the pieces SXSW attendees have created so far before heading off to more panels.

"Lego Corner" inside the Austin Convention Center.

Lego "Future Car"

The first place prize

AUSTIN – The title of this post isn’t just me being cute. It’s the name of the opening night party April and I attended on Friday night. Austin is nothing if not eccentric, and this event fit the bill. Essentially, it consisted of burlesque performers handing out their homemade cupcakes. What’s not to like? My favorite was a banana one that came with a side of bacon for some unexplained reason.

But I’m not down here to blog about cupcakes; I’m here to write about all the cool films that are showing this week. The next post will be about one I saw last night, but I had to get this out of my system first.

DENTON – What makes Denton weird is worth money. And that’s a problem.

Jazz proponent Harvey Pekar joined NX35‘s “Bringin’ the Weird” discussion that was originally supposed to feature only Art&Seek’s Paul Slavens and Brave Combo’s Jeffery Barnes. The Friday afternoon talk thus grew into a full-on panel discussion that covered everything from the gentrification of artsy neighborhoods (what’s happened to Deep Ellum and what Slavens and others are afraid could happen to Denton) to the societal value of obsessive-compulsive artists (the panel’s view: they’re critical, but they’ve gotta eat).

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This week in the Art&Seek Spotlight, we feature the North by 35 Music Conferette in Denton. For more on the event:

FIND: Today’s schedule of events is posted on the NX35 Web site. For a taste of what you will be in for, listen to Jerome Week’s radio story from this week and read Betsy Lewis’ interview with the festival’s founder on the Art&Seek blog.

REACT: All weekend, we’ll be blogging live from NX35. If you see a show that blows your mind, by all means post a comment to one of our posts over on the blog. And if there is a band we shouldn’t miss today, post a comment to this post.

DISCUSS: Is Texas big enough for back-to-back music festivals? It’s a long-standing tradition for bands playing  South by Southwest to stop through North Texas to play a show either coming or going. Is NX35 finally a way to centralize all of that invading talent?

CREATE: It seems like NX35 could use a catchy slogan — the kind of thing you’d see on a T-shirt. Does anyone have a good idea for one — maybe something playing off the idea of being SXSW’s little brother? I’ll throw one out: “If you’re in Texas, stop on by”

DENTON – Former Dallas Observer music editor Sam Machkovech believes the internet is strangling local-music coverage into uncosciousness as print media – daily newspapers, alternative weeklies such as the Observer, even national specialty mags such as Filter, Magnet and the recently killed No Depression – jettisons its established music writers.

But while his NX35-sponsored talk today on the internet’s effect on taste making decried the disappearance of such critics – he’s now based in Seattle and works primarily as a video gaming writer for Slog, the weblog arm of Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger – he offered a solution.

Online outlets should pick a distinct tone that reflects both its writers’ and targeted readers’ tastes and stick with it. “You have to create a portal that covers everything, but from a particular perspective,” he said. That means expanding it beyond just music to other arts (visual arts, theater, even film) and using national topics to contextualize local content.

But the most important factor? Using the same writers who are local (and, thus, accessible) and who exhibit consistent and passionate tastes and personalities. After that’s all set, then worry about monetizing it.

Alexander Ringe of Complexity Games in New York plays Bionic Commando for the first time as friends watch on.

I just got out of the ScreenBurn Arcade, one of the video game components to the SXSW Interactive Festival, and was truly impressed.

Open to the public, the arcade showcases the latest and most cutting-edge innovations in the gaming industry.

Walking into the arcade, you’re assaulted with dozens of flat-screen televisions and even more gamers waiting for their chance to play games that aren’t on the market yet.

One visitor, Yfran Garcia of Complexity Games in New York, said he was “stoked” to be trying out Capcom’s latest third-person shooter game, Bionic Commando.

“This game’s amazing,” Garcia said. “Even in Halo you can’t do some of the things you’re doing in this game.”

Marc Diana, a merchandiser for the Bionic Commando booth, said that’s exactly the type of interest they are looking for.

“All the feedback I get from the players today, I’m taking back to the developer,” Diana said. “In this way, ScreenBurn is invaluable to us.”

A young gamer takes on Ghouls and Ghosts, a video game from the '80s.

But fret not if you long for the days of Dungeons and Dragons and Super Mario Bros.

One booth in the arcade  is set up like a living room straight out of the ’80s, complete with all the games you long to play from the old days.

Scott Holmes, a representative of the booth set up by Mountain Dew, said the company wanted to bring a nostalgic feel to ScreenBurn.

“Of course you’re going to have the latest and greatest here, but we felt people might want to play something a little retro,” Holmes said.

Austin resident John Survis, brought his son to Screenburn for the first time and was immediately drawn to the older games.

“We have a Nintendo Wii at home,” Survis said. “I wanted him to see what games were like when I was a kid.”

The plays of UTD performance studies professor Thomas Riccio aren’t easy to follow. They’re not supposed to be. Riccio comes from a long line of contemporary writers — Harold Pinter to Erik Ehn, Richard Foreman to John O’Keefe — whose surreal approach avoids, or at least subverts, the conventions of linear storytelling.

Some People, the latest in his “Simulations” series, is another dollop of domestic disarray. A stranger enters the suburban home of a nuclear family and begins filming and narrating the stresses in their lives. Frank (Brad Hennigan) is addicted to television, his wife Morgan (Lori McCarty) to shopping. The consumer products she obsessively arranges speak to her.

The interloper (Mason York) projects a videotaped dream of Frank’s boyhood taunters and current neighbors criticizing him. Before the 90-minute show is over, the family’s Uncle Bill (Alex Nestor) emerges from a closet where he has been trapped since a game of hide-and-seek 18 years earlier. The air is thick with paranoia and panic.

Some People holds a funhouse mirror up to modern society. Vulgarity serves Riccio’s avant-garde vision as high seriousness mingles with crude nonsense. The production by Project X: Theatre for the Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre is a multimedia affair that zips from one absurd moment to the next.

There’s a kind of resolution at the end of the play, but it’s the least satisfying part. If you can just sit back and enjoy the strangeness, if you don’t need to know what happened and why, Some People pays off in other ways.

Check out Lawson Taitte’s review in The Dallas Morning News.

Some People runs at 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Saturday at WaterTower Theatre in Addison and March 27-April 11 at the Green Zone.

Image courtesy WaterTower Theatre and Project X: Theatre.

THE LINE TO END ALL LINES: There are few certainties when attending SXSW, but one of them is waiting in a massively long line to get your badge. This is my fourth tour of duty here, and it’s the same every year — a long line snaking around the first floor of the Ausin Convention Center.

The thing that has changed this year is that it seems that the iPhone has reached critical mass with the SXSW crowd. What used to be a series of random interactions between similarly stranded people has turned into a series of folks checking their e-mail, surfing the Web, etc. Sort of takes the “interactive” out of the SXSW Interactive Conference.

But I’m not here to complain. In fact, there are a lot of new things to be excited about at this year’s festival. For one, a new shuttle bus will connect the convention center with the major theaters – the Paramount on Congress and the Alamo Draft House on South Lamar. That’s a major plus for moviegoers, as that frantic search for parking before your screening has been eliminated.

Another step up is the Internet access in the convention center. In years past, it was always ironic, I thought, that one of the largest collection of high-tech people in the world was subject to the world’s slowest Internet connection. I always imagined a hamster trying to run a little bit faster each time I clicked on a new Web page. Things seem to be going much faster this year, which means I’ll be able to send stuff to the blog more quickly I hope.

So in summary:  Line to pick up badge – still slow. Connection to the Net – now fast.

Kieron Norfield (left), Andy Woodrow (center) and Matthew Squirrell traveled from Norwich, UK, to attend the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin

Friday officially kicks off the SXSW Interactive Festival, and no amount of rain or cold wind can keep hundreds of tech-savvy, Twittering (or “Tweeting”) folks like myself  from converging on the Austin Convention Center this morning.

Whether you’re a self-professed newbie looking to baby-step into the interactive world, or a professional scouring for the latest advances in technology and web design, there’s a panel discussion for you here.

As an interactive content producer  for KERA.org, I’m hoping to learn more about advances in Web design. But to satisfy my personal interests, I’m definitely checking out the latest in gaming at ScreenBurn, which SXSW describes as “taking the conference to the next level in terms of bringing together new media, music, film and the exploding world of video games.”

And let’s not forget an important aspect of the Interactive conference: the nightly, industry parties where professionals unwind after the day’s events.

“I’m looking to see what new technologies are out there, but I’m mostly excited about the parties,” said Andy Woodrow, A Web developer for a large insurance company in England. “Of course, the parties.”

Others are keeping the current economic crisis front of  mind. For former Dallas resident Enrico De Leon, a technical media specialist for a pharmaceuticals company in Austin, it’s important to see what interactive professionals are doing with the Web to maximize profits for their companies.

“We want to make our Web site more than just an online catalog,” De Leon said. “This is definitely the place to learn how.”

Keep checking back with Art&Seek all weekend for more updates from the Interactive Festival.

Though Thursday’s schedule of 28 performers at NX35 was relatively underwhelming as a whole (and the biggest name, notoriously wonky but entertaining Texas troubador James McMurtry, canceled at Dan’s Silverleaf), there were significant standouts.

Chief among them was Dead Twins, a Dallas-based power-rock act comprised of brothers Gabe and Nick Cardinale that already overflowed with presence as a duo. Its recent gestation during the past month into a quartet, made complete by the addition of rhythm guitarist and ex-Feds lynchpin Matt Wright, has launched Dead Twins into stratospheric realms, both in potential and power. Its set at Andy’s was unignorable. It may very well already be the area’s top hard-rock act (which, incidentally and arguably, was a tag claimed by the now-defunct Feds).

That set wasn’t the highlight, however. That honor went to the tongue-in-somewhere hilarity of Boyfriends, Inc., a part-comedic, part-progressive improv hip hop act comprised of Denton’s Astronautalis and Miami’s Bleubird. The premise: two tourmates who are together so much on the road that they’ve, well, learned to take care of each other – and there’s no shame in it. “On the road, sometimes you just got to take a bath with your man,” Astronautalis rapped in day-glo shorts and a black tank; Bleubird’s matching getup included a Jazzercise tank). “It saves water. We’re so green, we’re clean.” OK, maybe not clean. But funny. Really funny.