EXCLUSIVE: Big Day Out To Launch $20,000 Grant At SxSW

5 March 2013 | 2:36 pm | Scott Fitzsimons

Festival organisers want to combine interactive, film and music

Big Day Out are hoping to encourage the development of film and interactive techniques in live music performances with the announcement of the $20,000 Big Day Out Evolution Grant.

In conjunction with their promoter partners C3 Presents and Sounds Australia, the grant will be launched at this year's South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas at the inaugural Wide Open Road party. The aim of the party is to capitalise on the festival's three focus weeks of interactive, film and music and the Evolution Grant will be awarded to collective groups who utilise all three elements to create an annual “innovation, invention or theatrical event.”

Today Big Day Out's CEO Adam Zammit said, “We are at an important live production crossroads. Advances in multimedia production are enabling live performances to bring all of the power of film making to the stage, from projection, to lighting to even 3D. Advances in audience engagement, encompassing feedback, physical tracking, mobile technology, and social media have the potential to bring the audience into an artists stage show in ways that we can only imagine.”

Sounds Australia's Millie Millgate said she hopes that the Wide Open Road event “will bring creatives from all across Australia together in one room and that it becomes an incubator for new fresh and progressive collaborations across all three mediums.”

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Featuring a performance by 360, Wide Open Road will take place Tuesday 12 March at Holy Mountain in Austin.