The 2008 Theme
The Social - Social Networking Unplugged
An annual festival of art, music and ideas, which is currently in its 12th year,
Futuresonic occupies the orbits of both music and digital culture.
Extending the focus in recent years on presenting artworks in unexpected
city spaces, and on social art and social technologies, the 2008 theme is
The Social - Social Networking Unplugged.
The Social Theme
Informing this year's Futuresonic IDEAS and integrated ART strand is the theme of The Social: Social Networking Unplugged.
The Futuresonic Conference: The Social Technologies Summit will explore Social Futures, involving leading figures from the world of social software plus thinkers, developers, creatives and critics from diverse fields. The Futuresonic exhibition goes Unplugged, featuring artworks across the city, creating spaces for social interaction and giving a sideways glance at the world of web 2.0.
Computers have become social interfaces for sharing digital media and collaborating to build online communities and folksonomies. Some technologies are more social than others. Social technologies are bottom up and many-to-many instead of one-to-one or one-to-many. They can include technologies created and maintained by social networks, such as communities of developers and users working collaboratively with open source tools.
At the same time we see how electronic communication can isolate us, as more and more people drown in a deluge of email that generates stress, even reducing IQ. Additionally, 'online communities' are based upon an artificial equivalence between 'users' which obscures power relationships and issues of ownership.
The festival and conference will explore the new social spaces and the social implications of technologies for the many different kinds of people who make, use and are affected by them.
This runs much deeper than online social networking websites alone. When you use your credit card, you are using a social technology. Each time we buy something we let the company know where we are and what we are buying. An electronic profile is created for each one of us and the aggregated information is used to shape services and select the products on the shelves. This in turn shapes the choices available to us, and the society we live in.
The city is also being transformed. In one moment we can be sat on a bench, logged on to a wireless node in the park, and roaming through the virtual space of the internet, chatting intimately to people many thousands of miles away. The nature of the public sphere, as a place where people can congregate and meet, is changing. We need to conceive of new kinds of architecture, where a fleeting experience of city space is entangled with the folksonomies of the web.
Futuresonic plans to pull out the plug in order to take the new social spaces apart, see how they work, and put them together in new ways. It will explore the seam between open source culture and the public sphere in the city, and in a return to the pioneering early days of the internet, people will be able to build their own spaces to meet, hang out and chat.
In all parts of the globe people are seeking to open up or hold onto places to meet and communicate freely, online and offline. In India we see emergent kinds of community media, in South Korea new social uses of the mobile internet, and in Brazil the spread of 'cultural hotspots'.
Digital culture burns bright with a vision of being not in isolation but in groups, placing the relations between people first. Beyond the hype lies ever greater isolation and conformity.
Join us as we go in search of the social.
Web 2.0...
I take part
you take part
he takes part
we take part
you all take part
they profit.
(Paris '68 slogan remixed)
The Social - Futuresonic's Art strand
Futuresonic supports the creation of new work and seeks to enable artists to develop work at a larger scale. The exhibition will feature a wide range of artforms, and projects that respond to The Social theme in different ways. It will include projects that envision social futures, ambient performances that play with social expectations in public places, and artworks that explore virtual spaces and online social networking.
It will feature web based work, installation, software projects, performance and other formats. Projects can involve online, mobile or offline social networking. They can enable people to experiment collaboratively with different kinds of social experience and social interaction. Or they can intervene in the forces, inequities and inequalities that shape society. How can we make visible the unspoken rules and etiquette that guide what we do in public places, online and offline? Who are the social revolutionaries? The misfits? The conformists? Who has been left outside?
The theme of the Art strand is Social Networking Unplugged. It will be "unplugged" in a number of ways. There will be artworks involving offline (or unplugged) collaborative social experience and face to face social interaction. Other projects will look at who is excluded and left out of the loop of Web 2.0, and so "unplugged" in another way. Also there is the sense of pulling out the plug in order to take the new social spaces apart, see how they work, and put them together in new ways.
The Social - The Conference
Across the festival and conference programme, Futuresonic brings 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, music and art communities to Manchester for four days of seminars, workshops and events. At the heart of the festival is the internationally-acclaimed Futuresonic conference, and its focal point the Social Technologies Summit. It has prefigured new trends and is a place where important international discussions take place. Discover the small sparks that unfold into new ways of seeing the world and critically explore the latest upgrade affecting today's digital culture.
The conference will bring together leading figures to broaden the debate on the Social today, and propose and explore a critical understanding of social technologies. Presentations might look at the implications of specific technologies, or address broader themes. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction are encouraged. Open and participatory sessions will be combined with keynotes and panel discussions, promising a fun and engaging number of days.
Alongside key people from the Social Software firmament will be Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement, plus leading figures representing different viewpoints on the Social theme, plugged and unplugged. Visit and explore a range of social spaces, including online worlds, software environments, and the contemporary city.
Drew Hemment
Artistic Director
October 2007
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