An Update from Two Winning Hackathon Teams

The winning teams of the SXSW Hackathon in 2017

It's been a little over a month since dozens of the brightest minds in tech competed for 24 hours at the SXSW Hackathon. And while the taste of victory may have faded, the collaboration and work continues for two winning teams.

Music category winners Paul Wehner and Tom Brückner of Ctrl^3 (pronounced control cubed) are excited about the partnership they established at the Hackathon. Currently, they're focused on using augmented reality (AR) to reduce creative barriers for music producers and believe AR can enable musicians to escape the keyboard to provide a more natural interface for musical expression during live performances and in the studio.

After SXSW, Paul and Tom met up in Los Angeles to cement their partnership, develop a business plan, and set product requirements for a beta product. As an initial milestone, they're collaborating with music producers like David Block (aka thehumanexperience) to create and test an industry first live performance, mixed reality experience.

Paul and Tom said, “The support and contacts from the SXSW Hackathon and subsequent Incubation program were invaluable and have given us a turbo boost towards our mission of unlocking the creativity of beginner and professional musicians with AR.”

Winners in the VR category, Space+Time Studio team members have continued to expand on the mixed reality designer user experience. They’re adding these features into the next release of Amedeos VR-creation platform, Simmetri and are preparing for a summer of alpha-user testing with key artists. Space+Time Studio seeks future-looking artists interested in piloting VR/AR experiences to become alpha user testers. Interested artists can reach Space+Time Studio by emailing with subject "Alpha" to info@simmetri.com.

Team members are also currently exploring potential partnerships with augmented hardware manufacturers to integrate with their tools to provide a slick AR/VR enabled editor/experimentation suite for their gear. Some examples of augmented hardware manufacturers they’re looking at include motion capture suits, smart projectors, and IoT device makers.

Photos by Randy and Jackie Smith


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By John Krause

04/25/2017