The first night of SXSW Music is also the last night of SXSW Interactive and fittingly, Japan’s Wednesday Campanella did her best to make her show as interactive as possible – in more than one sense of the word and to varying degrees of success.
As she was carried out into the crowd by members of her team to start the show, singer Komuai spoke into the microphone, both to introduce herself and to ask that the music, which had not started quite on cue, be played. Once that was dealt with, she got down to business and put on an engaging performance. She challenged members of the audience to dance offs and waded into the crowd numerous times, using the space at Cheer Up Charlie’s to her advantage and offering up a lot of audience interaction.
The performance also involved a lot of use of technology, though much of that, while amusing, seemed to be cobbled together. A small screen was set up next to the stage along with a projector which took up a bit of real estate nearby. Onto the screen they projected live real time footage of Wednesday Campanella and members of the audience filtered through those face apps that switch out your face for things like poop emojis or Donald Trump’s face. That aspect didn’t always work smoothly, but from a performance perspective, she puts on a fun show (Wednesday Campanella is billed as a group, but for all intents and purposes, as the only person on stage, it’s Komuai’s show). I imagine Wednesday Campanella would be all the more impressive with a bit more stage production and none of the time constraints involved in a SXSW setup.