Austin’s own Wyatt Brand, a public relations, design and branding firm helmed by husband-and-wife duo David and Rachel Wyatt, serves as the stateside representatives of the i: Made in Israel project. The pair signed on with the southwest office of the Consulate General of Israel in Houston in January, having been recommended for their expertise in arts and culture branding and PR.

Founded March 15, 2006, Wyatt Brand brought David’s experience in representing arts organizations and non-profits together with Rachel’s experience in magazine art direction and production. The endeavor started modestly, operating out of the Wyatt’s home. “For a while in the beginning, we were making conference calls with Miles [the Wyatt's son] in a sling, or having these really quiet meetings because he was sleeping,” David said.

The Wyatts soon found themselves with a niche market to match their expertise.

“Often, you find that an organization, if they have a PR department, they have one person who is straight out of school, or they are the pro bono client of a large firm that’s not specifically versed in arts. There is definitely a desire to find someone who is specialized and who understands their needs,” he said.

Among their favorite moments are the opening Ballet Austin’s downtown facility and their recent work for the Texas Medal of Arts campaign, their first state-wide project. For i: Made in Israel, Wyatt Brand named the project, developed the on-site branding for the trade
show booth and executed a nation-wide campaign in both traditional press and new media.

“We’re helping people discover the cool things coming out of Israel,” he said.

Eatliz, a Tel Aviv-based rock band, is making their North American debut this month, following a handful of shows in Canada with a showcase performance at South By Southwest. The band, known for the stunning visual effects of their live shows, is part of a group of “cultural delegates” whose goal is to demonstrate the wide variety of Israeli innovation in design, music, film and technology. The project, called i: Made in Israel, will feature the creative efforts of artists from across Israel.
Among the i: Made in Israel events will be screenings of Andante, a film by Assaf Tager, live performances by four bands, participation in the Technology Summit and a digital exhibition of Israeli design curated by Flatstock 29. Visit http://schedule.sxsw.com for a full listing of i: Made in Israel events.
For Eatliz, SXSW is an exciting venue for both playing their music and enjoying the music of acts they admire. The six-piece band has toured across Europe, and enjoys heavy radio airplay in both Israel and Germany. Their first North American tour offers an opportunity to share their unique style with an entirely new audience.

PMT:What interests you about SXSW?
Eatliz: It’s going to be our first time in a large scale showcase festival such as SXSW and we are highly excited to take part in it! We just performed at Canadian Music week, which is also a showcase festival , but much smaller, so it was a kind of a work up
There are lots of amazing artists we wanna see live for the first time at SXSW such as Menomena, Queens of the Stone Age, Owen Pallett and many more. We wanna get to know new bands, see the city, go to the parties, make lots of new friends and colleagues, get the Eatliz word out there and just have fun!

PMT: What are you hoping will come from this experience? Any specific aims for your time in Austin (or your North American tour)?
Eatliz: We’re interested in getting inspired by the music and and vibes, in getting our own music and performance across and reach new audiences with kick-ass shows. After performing so many shows in Israel and Europe, this long tour gives us the feeling that something bigger and very good is on our way.

PMT: How did you get involved with the I: Made In Israel delegation?
Eatliz: We submitted to SXSW a while ago and was very happy to be accepted! A bit after our acceptance we found out that some more great acts from Tel Aviv are coming too; Electra, Hadag Nahash and Onili. Every act has a different style of music, so we are happy people will be able to see the eclectic and diverse side of Israeli music; Hip Hop & soul, Electro, Garage-rock and Art rock, which is what we do. We have 3 internationally warded animation music videos that were screened all over the world and got our name out there, but we were never present at all these screening cause it’s far from Israel. The I:Made in Israel music videos showcase will finally allow us to perform with these animation music videos with a new surprising extra animation.

PMT: How valuable is it for Israeli culture to have the kind of exposure a festival like this provides?
Eatliz: We see ourselves as ambassadors. it’s important for us to show to the world that Israel is not just wars and politics, the music is not only “kleyzmer”, and we don’t ride camels in the streets. We have a very unique and vibrant musical scene, crossing different genres, from alternative to metal to hip hop and hardcore and ska, many bands sing in English, and we’re not even mentioning other art forms such as visual arts, dance, film and theater… Participating in SXSW is a way for us to bring that message out.
Everytime we get abroad we find ourselves talking with people and rising above the media stereotypes people tend to see about Israel in the news. For us, Tel Aviv is really like New York, Berlin or Toronto. Every night you can see hundreds of live shows, theatre, dance, galleries and museums. The rock scene in Tel Aviv is diverse and performed in high quality standards, way more than you would dream to expect from a tiny Middle Eastern country.

PMT: What will American audiences find surprising about Eatliz and about the rock scene in Tel Aviv?
Eatliz: Eatliz has a very distinctive visual art concept, especially animation music videos that we combine in our live shows. We got 3 guitars and none of them is “lead”, we use regular instruments in an irregular way. We cross genres and we play complex parts without neglecting the energies of rocking out onstage. We call it Art Rock, cause we can’t really define it to one specific genre. People that discover us often say they never heard songs like our, cause they are a bit weird and grow on you.

Tuesday’s SXSW Interactive lineup got a shot of humor with a panel focusing on the benefits of using humor as an alternative to traditional modes of communicating important issues. Organized by Carnegie Mellon graduate student Chelsey Delaney, Comedic Communication: Developing User-centered Humor Design featured Adam Frucci, founder and editor of Splitsider, Baratunde Thurston, Director of Digital at The Onion and Lisa Cohen, founder of WitStream. A graduate of the University of Texas, Delaney said the interaction between humor and design provides a space to find solutions to complex problems.

“I started realizing as I got older that I used humor to cope with a lot of my problems, and that the approach was often lauded for its positivity. Once I really started getting into design and seeing that design is essentially responsible for facilitating and/or solving problems, I felt like no one had carved out the space for my go-to problem-solving option (humor). I decided to try carving out the space with a hope that designing for complex problems might become less intimidating for users and designers alike.”

Thurston echoed these comments during the panel, saying humor creates vulnerability in the audience by exposing a different element of their humanity. That vulnerability in the presence of laughter enables people to see opposing viewpoints without hostility.

Frucci said laughter’s value comes in part from its social nature. “It seems personal, but it’s really very social. People laugh when others laugh. Our peers influence when we laugh,” he said.

All of the panelists agree that technology has created new platforms for comedic communication. For Frucci, the openness of the internet has created a need for an authoritative voice to help curate the massive amount of humorous content.

“The internet has made it easier to create, but harder to filter out the good,” he said. For Cohen, the accessibility afforded by the internet requires an extra effort to stand out. “It really forces everyone to up their game,” she said.

The panel advocated humor as a way to cope with tragic world events. For Thurston, events like the revolution in Egypt offer a way to alter perception of those events by offering a statement of truth wrapped in humor. That humor offers an element of healing in the face of difficulty. For Frucci, humor fills a need humans experience in times of tragedy by giving them space to laugh.

“We are waiting for permission to laugh,” he said.

The panel came into existence as an outgrowth of Delaney’s thesis work, and concluded with by examining the valuable effect humor has on the way people think. Humor creates “an enabling mechanism for thought,” urging the audience, as they consider the implications of a piece of design to realize more about themselves.

“I think what I really wanted was to throw these ideas out there and make sure they were capable of rationally being real. I honestly expected more challenges to the ideas we shared, so I was impressed to learn that many people had had the same thoughts but just hadn’t had a venue to articulate them. The reaction shifted my goal from getting feedback for my own sake to collaboratively establishing Design theory, which is beautiful,” Delaney said.

Audrey Dodgen for PMT

“We really set out to make a piece of cinema. It’s a scientific murder mystery, and we wanted it to hold up as a film,” Mims said.

A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Bailey brings unique perspective to a film about law, science and politics. INCENDIARY examines the facts of the case against Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for killing his three daughters in a deliberate house fire. The questionable science used to convict, and the legal and political machinations spawned by the case pose unanswerable questions.

“It’s human nature to want to get to the bottom of it. We’ll never know exactly what happened, because all of the people who know what happened are dead. But we know that it didn’t happen the way Willingham was convicted of it,” he said.

INCENDIARY features a cast of real-life Texas figures, many unwittingly pitted against each other by their passion for the subject. Each person involved in the case is convinced of their view, creating an enigmatic puzzle in which the two sides are diametrically opposed and completely invested in their position.

“There are giant personalities in this film. Giant personalities with big opinions. These are people with conviction,” Mims said. Among the larger-than-life personalities, viewers will recognize some unmistakeable Texas archetypes — Bailey calls the myriad characters “very, very Texan, almost caricatures of Texas stereotypes.”

The filmmakers acknowledge gathering inspiration from King of Kong, and groundbreaking films like Errol Morris’ Thin Blue Line. Viewers will see moments in the film which are reminiscent of those inspirations. “We looked at films like King of Kong, where I don’t care about the subject, but it’s just a great film. You can’t make characters like these up, and that’s what we found in this film,” Mims said.
Bailey and Mims (himself a UT grad, with a master’s in film production) emphasize that the film is a puzzle, encouraging viewers to ruminate on the case and its effects.

“People’s opinions are going to be changed by this film. They are going to leave thinking about it, with one opinion, and the next day they are going to have a different opinion. The mystery is the thing,” Bailey said.

Here are some of the Texas Films at SXSW this year. For schedules and show times, check out the film schedule for SXSW here.

Apart
Director: Aaron Rottinghaus, Writers: Aaron Rottinghaus & Josh Danziger
Young love is derailed by a rare psychological disorder known as icd-10 F24.
Cast: Olesya Rulin, Josh Danziger, Michael Bowen, Bruce McGill, Joey Lauren Adams (World Premiere)

blacktino
Director & Writer: Aaron Burns
Sad, fat, black, latino, nerd. It doesn’t get any worse than that.
Cast: Austin Marshall, Devyn Ray, Tiger Sheu, Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey (World Premiere)

Building Hope
Director: Turk Pipkin
Filmmaker Turk Pipkin’s promise to help build the first high school for a remote African community connects Americans and Kenyans in this true story.(World Premiere)

Five Time Champion
Director & Writer: Berndt Mader
A film about love, hope, petty theft, adultery, and the boundless opportunities presented by science.
Cast: Betty Buckley, Dana Wheeler Nicholson, Jon Gries, Ryan Akin, Robert Longstreet (World Premiere)

INCENDIARY: The Willingham Case
Directors: Steve Mims & Joe Bailey, Jr.
Cameron Todd Willingham: A martyr for anti-death penalty activists, a ‘monster’ for right-wing politicians and a flash point for an astonishing twenty-first century fight between science and folklore. (World Premiere)

Inside America (Austria)
Director & Writer: Barbara Eder
A portrait of six teenagers during their senior year at Hanna High School in Brownsville and “a relentless, downbeat but convincing indictment of a small Texas high school.”
Cast: Raul Juarez, Aimeé Lizette Saldivar, Zuleyma Jaime, Luis De Los Santos, Carlos Benavides, Patty Barrera (U.S. Premiere)

My Sucky Teen Romance
Director & Writer: Emily Hagins
In a culture that is currently overrun with romanticized vampires, it is up to four geeky teenagers to defend their friend and beloved sci-fi convention from a group of very real, blood-thirsty vampires.
Cast: Elaine Hurt, Patrick Delgado, Santiago Dietche, Lauren Lee, Tony Vespe (World Premiere)

Otis Under Sky
Director: Anlo Sepulveda, Writers: Anlo Sepulveda, Anis Mojgani, Roberta Colindrez
Otis is a socially inept web artist who struggles to connect with people. He falls into unrequited love with Ursula, and his world is turned upside down.
Cast: Anis Mojgani, Roberta Colindrez, Tony Jackson, Jacqueline Leal, Ruth Sepulveda (World Premiere)

WUSS
Director & Writer: Clay Liford
A high school teacher is severely beaten by his own students. Too embarrassed to inform the authorities, he plots his own revenge.
Cast: Nate Rubin, Alicia Anthony, Alex Karpovsky, Jonny Mars, Tony Hale (World Premiere)

As of this morning, there are three separate bills before Congress to eliminate or severely restrict funding for public broadcasting (HR 68, HR 69 and HR 235) — 170 Million Americans

by Matt Largey
December 8, 2010

Matt Largey, KUT

Sixty-nine years ago, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor compelled the U.S. to join World War II — and led to the internment of thousands of Japanese, German and Italian Americans. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, researchers are now trying to preserve and memorialize those sites in Texas.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://trib.it/f3nwFd.

Why the heck won’t David Gregory factcheck his guests? The host of Meet the Press declined a proposal from NYU’s Jay Rosen to factcheck the show. The Sunday shows tend to drone around the periphery of partisan talking points. On The Media has follow up with Chas Danner who, with another college student, is fact checking the Sunday shows for Gregory and other Sunday shows.

-MO