Who We Are
Futuresonic Festival
Futuresonic is an annual festival of art, music and ideas. It involves a freeform mix of live events, exhibitions, workshops and talks in up to 30 different venues and spaces across Manchester UK. Futuresonic was established in 1995, with the first major festival was in September 1996, and has since presented projects in Asia, Africa, N America, S America and Europe.
Futuresonic occupies the orbits of both digital culture and music, and was one of the events that brought those worlds together in the mid 1990s. Musically its roots are in club culture and the tradition of electronic dance music that began with Jamaican dub. It is well known for its art and technology events - it has played a leading role in mobile and locative media, and a current focus is social technologies, art and the city.
The festival presents live music performances focusing on the best and up-and-coming music. It also commissions unique one-off projects and artist collaborations, with a special emphasis on projects using emerging technologies.
It has explored many themes, and stages exhibitions and events on technology culture and social issues. It is a place where important international discussions take place.
The Social Technologies Summit explores how technologies can create an extension of social space or support group interaction, and asks how we can make technology more social.
Futuresonic has a growing reputation for breaking new artforms and technologies. It promotes innovative forms of participation such as the EVNTS 'wiki-festival' strand which enables people to stage autonomous events as a part of the festival. A focus in recent years has been presenting artworks in unexpected city spaces, and on social art and social technologies.
Futuresonic and Future Everything could not exist without the generous support of funders, partners, advisory group members and all the many people who have helped us since the organisation was established in 1995.
Organiser
Futuresonic is presented by FutureEverything CIC, a non-profit creative 'community interest company'. It is registered with Companies House UK and regulated by the CIC Regulator.
Futuresonic has been awarded Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) status by Arts Council England. Futuresonic was a 'Manchester Firsts' project commissioned by the inaugural Manchester International Festival, and was selected as an exemplar project by the Original Modern campaign directed by Peter Saville.
The founder and Artistic Director of Futuresonic is Drew Hemment.
Contact:
FutureEverything CIC
Swan Buildings 20 Swan Street
Manchester M4 5JW
Office Tel 0161 834 1300
info[at]futuresonic[dot]com
The Futuresonic 2008 Team:
Drew Hemment - Artistic Director
Joanne Wain - General Manager
Sam Hunt - Project Manager
Tullis Rennie - Programme Manager
Malcolm Duffin - Marketing Manager
Ben Harding - Production Manager
Kit Turner - Programme Co-Ordinator
Rose Forde - Press Manager
Kocihi Chikuhi - Intern
Marie-Pierre Bonniel - Music Programme Manager
James Smith - Music Programme Manager
Gala Pujol - Volunteer Production Assistant
Michele Thompson - Venue Manager
Polly Bentham - Volunteer Manager
Design
David Bailey - Kiosk Design
Web
Drew Hemment - Director
Smiling Wolf - Web Design
Chris Lydon - Web Content Co-ordinator
James Jepson - Web Marketing
Anna Pechurina - Web Markting
FutureEverything CIC Board
Francis Cassidy - Chairman
Drew Hemment - Director
Howard Raynor - Director
Colin Fallows - Director
Andrew Palmer - Member
Futuresonic Advisory Committee
David Toop
Graham Massey
Sara Diamond
David Sefton
Shahidul Alam
Howard Raynor
Simon Tonkinson
Colin Fallows
Shlom Sviri
John Slade
Drew Hemment |
Futuresonic International Art Jury
Adrian Woolard (Head of Innovation Culture, BBC R&I / UK)
Dooeun Choi (Curator, Art Center Nabi / South Korea)
Drew Hemment (Director, Futuresonic / UK)
Lucas Bambozzi (Curator, arte.mov / Brazil)
Michaela Crimmin (Head of Arts, Royal Society of Art / UK)
Futuresonic Conference Steering Commitee
Drew Hemment
Ele Carpenter
Jonas Woost
Matt Locke
Tapio Makela
Futuresonic Conference Review Panel
Michelle Kasprzak
Beryl Graham
Charlie Gere
Karen Gaskill
Melinda R
Gunalan Nadarajan
Joel Slayton
Sadie Plant
Monika Buscher
Anne Galloway
John Urry
Lucy Suchman
Gabriella Giannachi
Paul Coulton
Leon Cruickshank
Nina Czegledy
Drew Hemment
Futuresonic EVNTS Jury
Graham Massey
Nadine Andrews
Andrea Ahimie-Carthy
Paul Allen
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Festival Strands
Futuresonic has 4 main strands: Art, Music, Ideas and EVNTS.
Futuresonic Art
Transforming the city into a space of experimentation, making it come alive.
Exhibitions, performances and interventions, including many world firsts, with a focus on social and participatory artworks which re-imagine the city. An opportunity to experience first hand the cutting edge of interactive media arts and digital culture.
Futuresonic Music
"A glimpse of tomorrow's music today." BBC
A celebration of musical pioneers and mavericks staged in 30 venues city-wide, including one-off performances and unique artist commissions involving emerging technologies. It's roots are in post-dub electronic music, and it showcases genre defying great live music.
Futuresonic Ideas
Discover "a whole new way of doing things in the air."
A major international conference, with its focal point the Social Technologies Summit. It is a forum to explore the issues, discover new developments, and meet the leading artists. It has in the past prefigured new trends and is a place where important international discussions take place.
Futuresonic EVNTS
Stage your own EVNT!
An 'open' or 'wiki' festival strand which enables artist groups and event organisers to present autonomous events at Futuresonic. Since its introduction in 2005, EVNTS has grown into a community of people who each year return to give the festival an extra edge.
Featured Artists
Futuresonic thanks all the artists who have participated over the past 12 years.
Featured musicians include 4hero, Apparat, Battles, Cristian Vogel, Faust, Fennesz, Graham Massey, Jamie Lidell, Kaffe Matthews, King Britt, Ladytron, Lee Ranaldo, Matthew Herbert, Merzbow, Mouse On Mars, Rhythm n' Sound, Def Jux ft. RJD2, Semiconductor, Shy Child, Skream, Sleeparchive, Wolfgang Flur.
Art and digital culture participants include Access Space, Akitsugu Maebayashi, Alexei Shulgin, Blast Theory, Christa Sommerer, Cory Arcangel, Graham Harwood, Harun Farocki, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Light Surgeons, LoVid, Marko Peljhan, Masaki Fujihata, Olia Lialina, Owl Project, Sadie Plant, Shu Lea Cheang, Toshio Iwai, Zachary Lieberman.
History
1995
Futuresonic established and presents its first event.
1996
The first full Futuresonic festival in September 1996 was a defining event for the field, and its format has influenced events internationally.
2001-3
Futuresonic presents exhibitions on themes such as surveillance and migration, and tours the world with the Sensurround project.
2004
Futuresonic presented its best known exhibition Mobile Connections, which was the first major exhibition worldwide on mobile, wireless and locative arts. It followed pioneering events and workshops by RIXC in Latvia, and preceded Wireless Experience at ISEA2004.
2005/6
It introduced the Urban Play strand of the festival, featuring interactive artworks in urban space.
2006/7
Futuresonic presented in 2006 the first fully realised live show using the amazing TENORI-ON by Yamaha and Toshio Iwai, the success of which led Yamaha to stage the worldwide launch exclusively in the UK in partnership with Futuresonic.
2007
Futuresonic is one of the 'Manchester Firsts' projects commissioned by the inaugural Manchester International Festival, and is selected as an exemplar project by the Original Modern campaign directed by Peter Saville.
2007
Futuresonic takes over one of the UK's principle shopping centres in an exhibition of major world-first artworks with a footfall of 1 million people. Two news items dominate the regional TV news, Tony Blair's resignation and the Futuresonic exhibition.
Projects
Futuresonic projects include Environment 2.0 (2007-onwards), Art For Shopping Centres (2007), Futurevisual (2007), Manchester Peripheral (2007), Social Technologies Summit (2006-onwards), Music For The Beep Generation (2006), Off The Map (2006), Maphester (2006), Instrument (2006), Urban Play (2005-onwards), EVNTS (2005-onwards), Low Grade (2005), Mobile Connections (2004), Turntable Re:mix (2004), Migrations and Eurodac Express (2002/3), Blacktronica (2002), Sensurround (2001/2), BrokenChannel (2001), Women in Electronica (2000-1), Audiovision (2000), SenseSonic (1999), Sub.merge (1998).
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