The spring festival season draws to a close as summer temps make “celebrating outside” a contradiction in terms. Before that happens the PROTOS Digital Art & Prototyping Festival introduces itself to Austin courtesy of the Austin Museum of Digital Art. It’s a perfect way to get inspired and discover ways to creatively spend the sweltering months indoors.

The four-day festival is split into daytime and evening events. While the sun shines. there are presentations, workshops, creative opportunities, film screenings, and more. Each day has a theme: Thursday, motion graphics/interactive/gaming; Friday, film/video/creative process; Saturday, urban and public works; Sunday, sound and visual design. All events during the day are free and feature folks from various tech fronts including animation, music, dance, film, gaming, and others. There are also some more cryptic descriptions of participants including Joao Beria who is described as dealing in 3-D sensory tech and Bleep Labs who will apparently handle “synthesis.” Ultimately it sounds like a SXSW-esque whirlwind of disciplines brought together to learn from one another and discover ways to party harder.

When the sun goes down, many of those same presenters don their party pants and put their talk into practice with live scores to films, A/V performances, interactive dance, and some live jams to keep things going until midnight. There aren’t any household names, but AMODA has an almost spotless record of bringing cutting-edge digital artists we’ve never heard of to our town, so we’re not worried.

So, if your wheelhouse sits somewhere at the intersection of tech, music, and visual art, you’ll feel right at home. The rest of us can marvel at the digital magic before our eyes, ears, and brains, even if we don’t fully understand how the magic happens.

PROTOS Digital Art & Prototyping Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, May 23-26, at the Long Center Rollins Theatre (701 W. Riverside). Daytime events are free (4:30-7:30pm); nighttime shows are $19.50 each or $74 for a four-day pass (9pm-midnight).

This article appears in May 17 • 2013.

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James graduated from Columbia University in 2000 and moved to Austin a year later. Ever since, he has followed the arts and video game scene in ATX, editing and writing stories for the Chronicle along the way. Over his more than 20 years with the paper he has climbed the "corporate" ladder from lowly intern to managing editor.