Alma DDB, Karmarama, Klaus Obermaier or Behance/99U are just a few of the new additions to the Festival
An endeavor that explores the most creative innovation in communication and in the emerging technological disciplines that have also become new communication tools. This is the concept at the core of the lineup –now closed– for Sitges Next, the festival of innovation in communication, to be held on May 5th and 6th and that will also acknowledge the most innovative pieces with the creation of the Next to Watch 2017 list.
The Retiro movie theater in Sitges will be welcoming the third Sitges Next, festival of innovation in communication, presenting a lineup with internationally renowned speakers. Here Be Dragons, Contagious Communications, Domestic Data Streamers and Fab Lab Barcelona are the confirmations announced recently by the Festival.
The North American agency Alma DDB will be bringing its unorthodox creative culture at the Festival via Àlvar Suñol, co-president and chief creative officer, winner of many awards of international relevance like Cannes, FIAP, El Ojo and the Latin American El Sol, among others. Their Spanish Lessons campaign for the popular Netflix series Narcos is a success story that Suñol will be explaining at Sitges Next. Ad Age’s prestigious A-List named Alma DDB “multicultural agency of the year” for the sixth year straight since 2010.
The combination of creative excellence and technology-inspired solutions and the use of data is the hallmark of Karmarama, the Uk’s most progressive creative agency. Sitges Next will be welcoming their executive creative director, Brian Williams, who had an intensive career at The Martin Agency in London, with clients like Walmart or the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. In 2012, the interactive projects We Choose The Moon and Clouds Over Cuba for the museum won an Emmy award, eleven Cannes Lions and a D&AD Yellow Pencil. Throughout his career, Brian Williams’ work has been acknowledged with over 120 international awards.
Since the early 90s, Klaus Obermaier -artist, director, choreographer and composer- has been exploring and working with interactive technologies in installations and performances. For Obermaier, who will also be at Sitges Next, interactivity is more than a technological challenge, because it’s about bringing meaning by causing a dialogue between human and digital. His creations, inter-media performances, are shown at festivals and theaters all over the world, the most recent of which at the KIKK International Festival of Digital and Creative Cultures in Belgium in November 2016.
Behance/99U is one of the platforms where today, you can find more high quality inspirational, practical, intellectual contents for creatives. The Festival will be welcoming Mark Brooks, brand director at Behance and creative and art director at 99U, a Barcelona-born designer who developed his professional career in New York until 2007. Since then, he has balanced his life between Barcelona and New York where he is presently a permanent resident and where he has developed projects including artistic/creative direction, branding, graphic design, typography and illustration for Nike, The New York Yankees, Behance, Lufthansa, the NBA, Estrella Damm or Razzmatazz, among others.
Ecoalf the leader in sustainable fashion production, committed to recycling, design, research and technology, turning waste materials like fishing nets or plastic bottles into top quality products under the slogan ‘In trash we trust’. Their director of marketing, Pedro Martínez, will be visiting Sitges Next to remind us that “there is no planet B”, and our resources are limited so it is unfeasible to consume them indiscriminately.
Hamill Industries is a Barcelona-based creative studio composed of Pablo Barquín and Anna Díaz. They are directors, makers, artists and inventors, with a passion for combining and hybridizing new media and techniques to create unique audiovisual universes and experiences. They do not only work in front of computers, they also like to work in their workshop with their own hands and on real materials, because their main motivation is blending tangible and virtual worlds through the research of techniques and technologies. They create and develop all types of formats: music videos, commercials, installations performances, and even their own motion control systems.
Anna Díaz will be at Sitges Next to explain their work process and how breaking away from the limitations of using a single tool has allowed them to apply audiovisuals to the installation and performance world.
Over the next few days, the Festival will be completing its lineup with two workshops. Tickets and passes for Sitges Next 2017 are available on the official website sitgesnext.com, as well as the possibility to enter pieces, which will remain open until April 27th.