Seven Things We Learned at REMIX Sydney 2015

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Goldfish are trumping humans on the attention-span front. There’s a gamer-in-residence at the V&A Museum in London. 79 percent of smartphone users check their device within 15 minutes of waking up. We could barely tweet these revelations fast enough at Sydney’s recent REMIX Summit, held over two days at Sydney Town Hall on June 2 and 3.

After two days of keynotes, masterclasses and panels (including our own Messina-fuelled adventure into ‘The Art and Science of Fun’), we came away from Remix with significantly satiated brains. From augmented reality advertising to futuristic museum pens, Twitter as a video game to the state of fun in Australia, we delved into the biggest issues, newest developments and wildest predictions of future culture and technology — taking time between panels to stuff as many caramel-filled doughnuts in our faces as humanly possible. So what did we learn? Let’s break down the best knowledge nuggets we mined over two days of REMIX, maybe you’ll learn something too.

The human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish

The goldfish notoriously has an attention span of just nine seconds. Human beings hey look there's a dog playing with a wild boar piglet. Which is to say, the human attention span is now being pegged at around eight seconds, down from twelve in 2000. It's all our phones' faults, of course. Legendary Australian art patron John Kaldor sees this as a great motivator to do work that slows people down and connects them to that experience of being present in one place (something his next Kaldor Projects artist, Marina Abramovic, knows all about). In this context, fun is also an important opportunity to hold people's attention. The Festivalists' Matt Ravier spoke of how his ostensibly 'fun' events such as Jurassic Lounge are actually an opportunity for people to learn and discover things they would otherwise be shut off to in their daily lives.

Humans have a profound desire for both digital connectedness and disconnectedness. Crack that and you'll be onto a good thing

Dr Genevieve Bell is Intel's resident anthropologist/world's most interesting human. She is fascinated by this seemingly contradictory observation that seems to come out of every survey, study or trend report. What can it mean? How do we possibly design technology or environments that cater for that? Bell puts forward Volkswagen's policy of shutting down its email servers outside work hours — employees literally cannot access work email before 7am and after 6.15pm on weekdays — as one example of a creative response to this. It allows people time to be disconnected from work, but not necessarily the rest of their digital lives. The idea has started to gain traction in other workplaces around the world.

This is the time for museums to go beyond the smartphone in their audience engagement

Another of REMIX's MVPs was Seb Chan, the former Sydneysider who's now leading digital developments at New York's forward-thinking Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (he spoke all about it in our interview). While that museum was shut for three years for renovations, they took a new approach to digital engagement that would encourage people to look up from their screens. The result is a nice-to-hold and excellent-to-use 'pen' with an NFC antenna and a small amount of memory. It lets you bookmark exhibits, expand on them at table-sized tablets and generate a take-home summary. User experience is part of their mission statement now. The ultimate challenge, however, is not to let the digital accoutrements swamp the real draw to the museum. As Kim McKay, director and CEO of the Australian Museum said, almost no child has ever responded to the question 'what would you like to see more of?' with 'more digital'; they want more motherflippin' awesome dinosaurs.

Don't discount Microsoft yet

Google, Apple and Oculus Rift may be the companies dominating our chatter about the future of technology at the moment, but uncool Microsoft is determined to claw its way back. So it's a win that their representative at REMIX Sydney, Lawrence Crumpton, Developer Platform Evangelist, may have been the speaker to leave us the most wide-eyed with their demo. First, there was the very emotive and instant appeal of Skype Translator, which promises to translate conversations between different language speakers in real-time (and is actually already available in limited form). Then he showed the Microsoft Hololens headset, which made holographic design tools, plumbing assistance and Minecraft seem like The Thing to Have.

We're all gamers now

Far removed from the anti-social male stereotype surrounding gamers of the '70s, '80s and '90s, gamers today are much more mainstream then they've ever been. Around 95 percent of Australian kids between 5 and 16 are considered 'gamers'. That's the crazy stat Good Game creator and executive producer Janet Carr dropped in a late afternoon panel dubbed 'The Gaming Revolution: Everyone's a Gamer'. Sure, this stat takes into account mobile and tablet games (lookin' at you Candy Crush and Angry Birds), but it's not just kids that are constantly gaming. Good Game co-host Stephanie "Hex" Bendixsen noted that all of us a gamers, even when we're not using a console or PC — even Twitter is a form of game; gaining more followers and retweets is like scoring points and levelling up. Just don't go jumping from high platforms or attempting to pull a combo on passersby in your daily life.

'Planned' creative districts are taking over from 'organic' creative districts in great cities

New York, London, Sydney, think of the new creative districts popping up in these great cities — are they built or formed? While historically, artists have invigorated lower socioeconomic areas (before the bigwigs get there and gentrify everything), Mark Davy of the Future City blog believes future development could be leaning toward the former. Take the Nine Elms project in London's South Bank for example; creatives working alongside engineers at the time of development in order to make the new, built environment more stimulating. It's far removed from corporate art plonked down after structures are built, it's about collaboratively developing city districts as modern, creative hubs — balancing money and commercial development with artistic ideas for a better city overall.

Images will run the future of mobile

The race to capture every last image in the world is on. Unpacked by a panel of Marc Fennell (ABC's Download this Show), Simon Crerar (Buzzfeed), Russ Tucker (TBWA) and Rish Mitra (Blippar), mobile culture is almost entirely run by images — whether we're taking a selfie, sharing an Instagram, exploring world with an Oculus Rift or using augmented reality to find out more about the objects in front of our eyes. CEO and founder of Blippar Mitra took us through the app, a new image recognition system, augmented reality platform and advertising tool which identifies objects, unlocks new content and manipulates what we see through our phones (kind of like Shazam for images but way more trippy). It's going to take some time for Blippar to capture all the photographs, illustrations, logos, designs etc. they need for ultimate image recognition, but they're on their way. Visuals run the future of mobile, from YouTube virtual reality videos to Periscope, so look sharp.

Keen to learn more about the future of culture and technology as predicted by REMIX? Check out our interview with Seb Chan here, or our discussion on the state of fun in Australia here. Or just flick through our REMIX image gallery if you've had enough learning for one sitting.

By Rima Sabina Aouf and Shannon Connellan.

Images: Bodhi Liggett, Central Park, Blippar and Dollar Photo Club.