FutureEverything

Typical for the FutureEverything ethos, the only time I spent in Second Life was when I was running a series of Second Life events - the virtual meetings in Second Life leading up to the Social Technologies Summit at Futuresonic 2008.

I only visited 4 times, once for each of my 4 events - which was kind of strange, but not unusual, working out how it all works, in real time, at the same time as leading the event and hosting discussion.

Now lots of people are telling me Second Life is over, losing users by the minute.

Glad then that we dipped our toe in the water while it was still hot, with our virtual Futuresonic meetings in 2008.

Each year FutureEverything commissions and presents artworks on themes related to society, the city, environmental sustainability and technology, and plays a leading role in international debates in contemporary art and digital culture.

The festival also features a special focus on an annual theme. In 2010 the annual theme is The City Experiment - Doing It Together. More on Art themes here and Conference themes here.

Cities can be seen as laboratories, as test beds, as accelerators. The festival will highlight urban transformation, when we see the world in different ways, when we experiment with the ways we work, play, create and relate with one another. Manchester has long been seen as a city of experimentation. Today it is home to Europe's biggest experiment in creating a future city, with major initiatives including MediaCityUK, Corridor Manchester and the Sharp Project. 

FutureEverything is world renowned for pioneering work in mobile and locative media, and in 2010 it will look again at mobile and locative arts in the age of the iPhone and Android.

FutureEverything is proposing that Manchester becomes an openData City, following the example of cities such as Vancouver and committing to making public data freely available. Cities have become vast repositories and producers of information, does the opening of these data sources inform and change the way the city evolves? Join us in exploring how this can ignite innovation and enable transparent governance, and so leverage further development. 

Adam Greenfield highlights a danger of losing creativity, energy and diversity in networked cities. Cities bring different things and people together, creating a clash of cultures and systems. Social media does the opposite, bringing similar things and people closer together, creating affinity groups. FutureEverything has created the Diversity Groups challenge to invite developers, artists and thinkers to put the edge and innovation back into the networked city.

Public realm experiments combining built environment and digital infrastructure are happening in Manchester at a mass scale. The built environment is increasingly responsive to human and environmental factors as networks of sensors and actuators pervade the networked city. The city is a living organism which continually adjusts and adapts, an ongoing experiment.

Data visualisation enables people to interpret complexity. This makes huge datasets accessible and meaningful. FutureEverything will present the state of the art, and invites visual artists and games designers to create new interfaces.

FutureEverything is exploring a new model of global event, involving networked satellite events around the globe, and distant collaboration between a central city and the remote sites. The vision is that this model will provide an entirely kind of Globally Networked Event (GloNet), reducing the need to fly in participants.

FutureEverything is collaborating in the launch of the UK's first FabLab. Rapid prototyping blurs the boundary between the digital and physical realm. In the near future, physical objects will be able to be printed at home using standard devices. At the festival there will be a FabLab Art Challenge with 18 artists challenged to create an artwork in 8 hours (apply online soon).

Other themes include Reality Mining and Community Sensing. Interpreting past behaviours that predict future action is nothing new, but the advent of sensor networks that can collect vast amount of complex information regarding preference, spatial and contextual habits has ushered in the possibility of determining how people will behave in future scenarios. This machine based determinism challenges our notion of free will.

Finally, launching the international centenary celebrations of the birth of Marshall McLuhan, FutureEverything asks the question "what didnt he predict?"

Drew Hemment / Creative Director (November 2009)

A new plan for residencies of creatives between Sendai and Manchester has been made following a visit by Mr. Gen Amano from Japan this week.

In March I was invited to Sendai in Japan to speak at the Sendai Creative Forum  - Local to Global, Global to Local about FutureEverything and its impact on the city of Manchester. View my blog post here.

A return visit took place this week, with my host in Japan, Mr. Gen Amano, the Director of Industry Promotion from The City of Sendai, visiting Manchester to develop a partnership between the cities.

Sendai is a regional capital to the north of Tokyo, sharing many similarities with Manchester. It has the 3rd strongest creative industries sector in Japan, and is 1st for music.

Gen Amano is leading efforts to build the creative industries in Sendai, and his idea is to do this through a partnership with FutureEverything.

The plan is to establish a programme of residencies / exchanges between FutureEverything (Manchester/May) and the new Occur festival (Sendai/October). Our aim is to showcase creative visionaries, with the focus on partnering artists and creative organisations in the two cities. We also plan to stage a remote collaboration event during FutureEverything and Occur.

Together we did the rounds of the key people working in Manchester who can help him in his efforts, including Northwest Vision and Media, NWDA, MIDAS, Manchester Digital and Manchester Digital Development Agency.

It was great to catch up with Amanosan, and I am looking forward to building the collaboration between our two cities. (Thanks to Katie Gallagher from MIDAS for her help during the visit.)

On 3rd December we launched the revamped EVNTS Network at a joint event with Manchester Social Media Cafe.

This was a coming together of two communities, the independent arts and music creatives from EVNTS, and the social media digerati from Manchester Social Media Cafe.

Hugh Garry from BBC Radio was guest speaker, and he joined the dots between the two worlds, comparing his experience in running music events with his experience of working in social media. He talked about his long history as a club promoter, and how he had built a community for his club in just the same way that he now builds communities online. Garry is currently responsible for driving digital creativity at Radio 1, overseeing all new media projects and inspiring a team of producers to push the boundaries of innovation.

EVNTS is a network of North West creatives working in events, music and the arts. The EVNTS Meetings are a series of regular gatherings, open to everybody working in the creative industries and beyond, to come together to network, collaborate and share.

Since its introduction in 2005, EVNTS has grown from a strand of the FutureEverything festival (formerly Futuresonic), and into a community of creative people who meet year round.

During the festival, EVNTS presents a programme of independently run music and art events across the city, showcasing new and groundbreaking talent. It gives the opportunity for more people to participate in the festival, and enables artists to get their work seen and heard, plus a limited number are awarded funding assessed by a jury of industry experts.

In 2008, EVNTS expanded into becoming a series of networking meetings throughout the year, and in 2009 FutureEverything has collaborated with Northwest Vision & Media to enhance the network through a series of speaker led presentations and workshops. Each EVNTS meeting will be designed specifically to offer a platform of support and advice to those who wish to get involved in the festival and to help develop the burgeoning creative economy within the region. 

Last week FutureEverything collaborated with BBC Backstage and Codeworks to stage TEDxManchester, one of a series of "TEDx" events around the globe, which are "local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience."

On all objective criteria, TEDxManchester was a solid success, some great talks, some not so great talks, packed hall with +/-350 attending, all staying for the full seven hours of talks - we believe it is the biggest TEDx event to date in Europe.

And yet afterwards it took some criticism, mainly because some of the speakers did not live up to the incredible standards set by the speakers many of us have come to admire so much on the TED.com site.

Great comments were made on many blogs, an overview from bbcbackstage is here.

OK, so here's the scoop, someone needs to get on to @TEDchris here, as if what is (probably) the most successful TEDx to date is seen in a negative light, then the model needs a refresh.

There is a big issue here, one close to my own interests, which is how we can change the way events are run, embracing a more open, bottom up approach, without sacrificing the quality and characteristics that come with something highly authored and centrally designed.

There is a fundamental difference in nature and culture between a highly authored, highly produced, highly programmed conference such as TED, FutureEverything and Thinking Digital, and events which are more bottom up and emergent, such as TEDx or our own EVNTS. You can mix the two - we always have open, participatory strands in FutureEverything - but they are still not the same.

We have got round this with the EVNTS strand of independent events in the FutureEverything festival, running since 2005, as all the "EVNTS" take place in Manchester at the time of the festival, and because we offer mentoring, and limited amounts of funding, to help nurture the next generation.

Trust in the ability of strangers is a marvelous thing, and sure enough EVNTS quickly established itself as one of the most vibrant strands of the FutureEverything festival, and has grown into a community who meet regularly year round, and return each year to give the festival an extra edge.

TEDx, like EVNTS, is not of course entirely bottom up, it is programmed. But it depends on, and absorbs much of, the open character of digital culture in calling for people to "do it together."

Most good open systems need some serious engineering behind the scenes in the rules that govern the system. TEDx is similar, and to run a TEDx event the organisers need to apply and meet the criteria.

But TEDx is not TED, and the main lesson from TEDxManchester is about managing expectations. There were some very strong talks, others less so, and yes it is true some failed to set the roof on fire. I was glad to see some new faces in the coffee breaks, many no doubt drawn by the "TED"x brand, and expecting the full TED roadshow to roll through town.

All the people involved in running it knew what to expect. A lot of effort went into TEDxManchester, but nothing to compare with our own big annual events, when we have the luxury of funding and the ability to work on programming all year round, devising topics with speakers, and engaging deeply in the content with individual contributors months in advance.

Another interesting comment by Kim at globalsocialite was that too many talks at TEDxManchester were on digital technology, not enough looking outside the digital space for inspiration.

I replied that at FutureEverything too we dont focus just on digital, in fact we stopped using ‘digital’ when talking about what we do many years ago, and now just say we are a “festival of art, music & ideas.”

More widely, I think you can see this in two ways.

On the one hand, drawing on speakers from “anywhere” means that we can listen to, say, an astrophysicist amaze us with insights, many of which would be mundane to an audience of astrophysicists. This gives speakers the freedom to really let rip, and deliver something profound and inspiring, that draws on the full wealth of their specialist wisdom.

On the other hand, focusing on one specific area, say digital culture, means that you can have many different perspectives, and because the speakers are speaking to an audience of their peers, you tend to get more nuanced contributions. You are less likely to get “this is the one insight that motivates me” but more likely to genuinely break new ground, and raise the bar in understanding on a particular topic.

Add unmanaged expectations with one brand, TEDx, to politics around another, BBC. The other noticable thing about TEDxManchester was how the association with the BBC polarised people's opinions. During the event the BBC speakers took a lot of hard arsed questions, which frankly made me mad, as this was politics imported from outside the room unrelated to the content of the talks.

I will stand up for the BBC, because despite the issues that come with being a bureaucratic monopoly, they have made a major new commitment to my home city, Manchester, and I am determined that they will find a welcome that is genuine and heartfelt.

Its always good for an event to generate debate, and TEDxManchester generated more than a little. Now the dust is settling, evnt geeks like me can learn the lessons for next time.

To comment, first create an account

I was invited to Picnic09 to give a main stage talk, it is always exciting to speak at Europes largest social media gathering, and my talk explored the theme of "bringing the future into the present."

Alongside this, FutureEverything was invited to present at Picnic09 a continuation of our Environment 2.0 project from Futuresonic 2009, one of two outings for Environment 2.0 this month - the second being the Environment 2.0 art exhibition at LICA.

At Picnic, FutureEverything co-presented the Ecomap Lab in collaboration with Waag Society, FING and Amsterdam Innovation Motor. The aim is build a shared understanding on how to map the environment (eg. energy, waste & mobility), aggregate the data and visualize it to promote behavioral change and reduce CO2 footprints. We will use alternative measurement networks and services that enable people to take active part. Based on international examples we will develop prototypes for getting, aggregating & visualizing environmental data in effective, useable and unexpected ways. Learn more

At LICA (Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts), FutureEverything has been invited to curate an Environment 2.0 exhibition featuring a selection of works enagaging in the Environment 2.0 theme, with artworks from international artists including Ackroyd & Harvey, HeHe, Amy Balkin, Eva Meyer-Keller and Aaron Koblin. 

The exhibition was was the Art Launch for FutureEverything 2010, and was the inaugural art exhibition at LICA. Learn more

In the last two weeks we have been on the road introducing the new FutureEverything Awards to our international community, and explaining the motivation for the name change from Futuresonic to FutureEverything.

The first launch event was at ISEA2008 in Belfast, then via Berlin we moved to Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Ars Electronica is an ideal place to introduce the new Awards, as it is home to the equivalent of the Oscars in the media art field, and I was myself awarded an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica for the artwork Loca: Set To Discoverable.

At our Ars Electronica event I spoke about the curatorial vision which underlies both the festival and the new Awards, and explained what we mean by "Bringing the future into the present". To bring the future into the present means to enable people to experience today some aspect of a possible future. This thinking forms the backdrop to many past Futuresonic exhibitions, and is also a focus embraced by the ImaginationLancaster lab and the new FutureEverything Awards, which celebrate creative projects in any medium which offer a new and unique way to experience or see the world and help to bring the future into the present.

An example is my own artwork Loca, which provocatively tracked and communicated with thousands of people in San Jose using a Bluetooth network. It enabled people to experience and inhabit a dystopian, and slightly scary possible future, one in which we are all surveilled and controlled using the devices we carry everyday.

Many Futuresonic (now FutureEverything) exhibitions and commissions over the years have also worked to bring the future into the present. Just a few examples include the Mobile Connections exhibition in 2004 which prefigured the rise of mobile media and digital mapping, Social Networking Unplugged in 2008 in which artists experimented with different forms of social networking, or Environment 2.0 in 2009 which envisioned linking people around the world to create a global observatory of one billion eyes.

The festival has always been very diverse, and not all artworks at the FutureEverything festival take this form. Likewise the intention is that in The FutureEverything Awards the idea of "Bringing the future into the present" will inspire people working across a wide range of fields. We expect a huge diversity in the kinds of projects submitted, including some which simil

arly enable people to experience a possible future in the here and now, and also projects which otherwise offer a new and unique way to experience or see the world.

The audience included many participants from past editions of Futuresonic, and they were keen to learn about the motivation for the name change from Futuresonic to FutureEverything. 

We have changed the name to FutureEverything so that the name better represent what the festival already does. The festival has had strong visual art and digital culture strands since it first began, and as the festival has grown in recent years we wanted a name that represents the broad focus and the increasing ambition.

The name change has brought a lot of new collaborators to our door and has opened an exciting new chapter in the life of the festival. 

It is always a pleasure to meet people from the FutureEverything community when on the road visiting other international events, and we are looking forward to involving them in the future of FutureEverything and The FutureEverything Awards.

On Thursday 30th July I gave a talk at TEDxRegentsPark, hosted by CITIN, the UK's national Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network.

I spoke about my interests in social technologies and mass participation, culminating in the recent Environment 2.0 projects, and discussed my work at FutureEverything and ImaginationLancaster.

Knowing the reputation of the TED.com website, it was interesting speaking to a potential future audience not present with me in the room.

Other speakers were Stefan Agamanolis from Distance Lab, and Jeremy Silver.

What is TEDx? - In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

On Monday 27 July I gave a talk and artist presentation at Upgrade! Berlin, an event convened to coincide with my visit to Berlin and that of a number of other "art asylum seekers."

The event took place in the surroundings of Christoph Ziegler's 'Camp Exodus' in the Skulpturenpark, where a autonomous sculptural / architectural space had been created for visiting artists.

The event featured myself alongside Amanda Steggell (artist / Oslo), Perry Bard (artist / New York) and Elena Veljanovska (curator, Upgrade! Skopje).

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture.

Visit Upgrade! Berlin event website

Locative arts in which artists experiment with location aware devices has been a focus at Futuresonic and the Social Technologies Summit for many years, since we helped shape the field in 2003, leading to Mobile Connections (2004) and my own artwork on pervasive surveillance Loca: Set To Discoverable (2006).

Interest in locative arts is still running strong, and a big new opportunity has come along in the shape of the Locative Cinema Commission, offered jointly by Banff New Media Institute, ZER01 and Sundance Institute.

This is a funded residency and technical support to produce a new work to be shown at the 2010 01SJ Biennial, the 2011 Sundance Festival, and the 2011 Banff Summer Arts Festival.

Deadline August 3 - more info & making a submission