Sony Corporation (“Sony”) will exhibit at SXSW (South by Southwest) 2019, the world's largest creative business festival in Austin, Texas, from March 9 (Sat) to 12 (Tue). Inside the Sony booth (WOW Studio), there will be programs that combines discussion sessions and presentations with experiential exhibits under the theme of "Technology × Creativity"

The sessions will feature lively discussion about the key question “Will technology enrich human creativity?”, and topics to shed a light on “Co-creation of human beings and artificial intelligence (AI)", and "Expansion of creativity".
Starting with Hiroaki Kitano, President and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL), the guest speakers include Dr. Jürgen Schmidhuber, the father of modern AI, who has since the 1990s done groundbreaking work on AI as a university professor and researcher and Garry Kasparov of Azerbaijan, who held the title of world chess champion for 15 consecutive years. The renowned roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, now Visiting Senior Scientist at Sony, will be also invited as the guest speaker.

Sony will also present a varied program of interactive exhibits, including “CAVE without a LIGHT,” a showcase which expands the sense other than visual in the darkness by using Sony's sound & haptic technology, and the AI-assisted music composition technology “Flow Machines”*, a joint project of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. and Sony CSL. These exhibits will let visitors explore the latest R&D projects applying Sony’s cutting-edge technology and newest prototypes.

• *Flow Machines is a research and deployment project aimed at achieving augmented creativity of artists in music. We create new music together with artists by developing new technology based on leading-edge machine learning and signal processing technology.

• Date and time
  March 9 (Sat) to 12 (Tue), 2019. 12: 00-20: 00
• Place
  WOW Studio
  Address: 99 Trinity St. Austin, TX 78701 USA

• SXSW 2019 Sony Official Site *Currently not accessible

• Talk session guests
  We invite various guests and hold a talk session in line with themes such as AI and creativity.
  The guests of the main talk session are as follows.

March 9th Guest Speaker

• Jürgen Schmidhuber
  Known as the father of modern AI, since age 15 Jürgen Schmidhuber’s main goal was to build a self-improving AI smarter than himself, then retire. His lab's deep learning neural networks such as LSTM have revolutionized machine learning, are now on 3 billion smartphones, and used billions of times per day. He also pioneered unsupervised adversarial networks, artificial curiosity and meta-learning machines that learn to learn. He is recipient of numerous awards, and chief scientist of the company NNAISENSE, which aims at building the first practical general purpose AI. He is also advising various governments on AI strategies.

DLD 2017, picture alliance / Andreas Gebert

March 10th Guest Speaker

• Garry Kasparov
  Garry Kasparov is widely regarded as the greatest chess player in history, becoming the youngest world champion ever at 22 in 1985. He is the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and the founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI). RDI’s essay collection Fight for Liberty came out in October 2018. Kasparov speaks frequently on politics, decision-making, and the human-machine relationship. His latest book is Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. He lives in New York City.

March 9th & 10th Guest Speaker

• Hiroshi Ishiguro
  Roboticist. Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Japan. Visiting Director, ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, and ATR Fellow.
  The doyen of research on humanoid robots, Professor Ishiguro is researching and developing perceptual information infrastructure for intelligent robots. His goal is to build a next-generation IT robotics platform. Winner of the 2011 Osaka Culture Prize.
  Also a winner of 2015 Prize for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

• Interactive exhibits
  Explore the latest R&D projects applying Sony’s cutting-edge technology and newest prototypes.

• CAVE without a LIGHT
  It is an experiential exhibition of inclusive design* that can be enjoyed without vision developed by Quality & Environmental Dept., Creative Center, and R&D Center at Sony. You can experience playing music together with other attendees using Sony's sound and haptic technology in a dark cave like setting. This program demonstrates the possibility of technology that diverse people can enjoy themselves regardless of the presence of disability.

• *Inclusive design: A method of designing together, acquiring new awareness by understanding diversity.

• Flow Machines
  A display showcasing the AI-assisted music composition technology Flow Machines, jointly presented by Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. and Sony CSL.
  *Flow Machines is a research and deployment project aimed at achieving augmented creativity of artists in music. We create new music together with artists by developing new technology based on leading-edge machine learning and signal processing technology.

• Sample of a Flow Machines composition: Imaginary Line

• * "Flow Machines" is a technology developed by Sony CSL.

• Superception
  A research framework led by Sony CSL that uses computer technologies for expanding and transforming human perception. This is the third year Superception will be featured at SXSW. This year Sony will showcase “Fragment Shadow”, one of the latest outcomes of the research, a system that enables you to experience changes in bodily sensations through visual changes in your own shadow.

• About Superception (Super + perception)

• Das Fremde
  An installation based on the research of Sony CSL using robots and an autonomous agent program to show how language emerged, and how it has evolved and changed. Multiple robots, each possessing different traits and knowledge, create new words and communicate in new ways as they interact and are influenced by their surroundings and the people watching. This installation will get visitors thinking about how people interrelate with artificial intelligence and machines.

• About Das Fremde

We will continue updating information as soon as it’s decided (scheduled in late Feb) on additional guest speakers and exhibitions on the official website.

Sony’s technology will also be presented at 8K theater within NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai- Japan Broadcasting Corporation) booth. Crystal LED Display System (approx. 440 inches size) adopting Sony’s uniquely developed high picture quality display technology is installed as the core system of the theater. Various 8K contents including gameplay footage specially edited for this occasion, and video from Carnival in Rio de Janeiro will be played, offering extraordinary lively and immersive viewing experience to the audience. (Open between Mar. 11 (Mon) to Mar.13 (Wed), 10:00 – 18:00 at Grimes Studio, 500 E 5th St, Austin, TX)

• About SXSW
  SXSW (South by Southwest) is an event featuring music, film and interactive media that has taken place in Austin, Texas, since 1987. The event attended by professions across the world has focused on helping creative people achieve their goals by providing networking opportunities through multiple sessions, exhibits and screenings. The diversity of topics discussed by people from many different backgrounds is known to allow for unexpected discoveries. SXSW 2019 will be held from March 8 (Fri) to March 17 (Sun) and the Interactive Festival themed on new technologies and business ideas will be held from March 8 (Fri) to March 12 (Tue).