About Collaborative Projects

Futuresonic 2006 features a range of projects that explore new forms of collaborative culture, showcasing social and artistic practices that encapsulate an independence based upon cooperation and collaboration. Many of these are founded in social technologies that enable people to live and work in increasingly decentralised, collaborative ways, often recalling the DIY spirit of punk press, the independent media production of fanzines, pirate radio and a thousand other movements.

The focus on collaborative culture and independence appears as a thread running through the many different components of the 2006 festival. Mapchester is a test-case for how a city could be mapped and a guide for a festival created on collaborative and open principles. mimoSa visit the UK from Brazil to build an 'urban intervention machine', in a grass roots re-appropriation of technology enabling local people to produce independent media. And Share bring the last word in collaborative live music from New York, inviting people to wire up their own equipment and play along.

In keeping with the collaborative spirit, a range of artistic groups at Futuresonic 2006 are working together on a series of collaborative projects - collaborating with the other artists and organisations, with visitors to the festival, and with the citizens of Manchester, breaking out of the festival venues to hit the streets and waterways of the city.

COLLABORATIVE CULTURES ARTIST MEETING
A chance to get involved in building an 'urban intervention machine' with mimoSa or to learn about hidden urban cultures with Bandung Center for New Media Arts. Ricardo Ruiz from mimoSa (Brazil) and Gustaff Harriman from Bandung Center for New Media Arts (Indonesia) are artists in residence at Futuresonic 2006.
7.00-9.00pm, Wed 19 July
The Basement, 24 Lever St, Northern Quarter, Manchester

Share

Share hold free, open jams and workshops in cities including New York, Montreal, San Diego and Weisbaden. You are invited to bring your portable equipment, plug in, improvise on each others' signal and perform live audio and video. Share provide a forum for fluid, improvised creative processes. Teaming up with the locally based SoundNetwork outfit, this is Share's first visit to the UK. So this is a call out... bring your laptops, guitars, bent circuits and trumpets, Theremins and 16mm's, mini Puppet theaters, projectors, Kalimbas and dancing shoes to Share at Futuresonic 2006. Come to watch and listen; come to play. Please contact Share at discussion@share.dj or via SoundNetwork to let us know how we can help you participate.
Museum of Science and Industry
12-5pm, Sunday 23 July
http://share.dj

Fast and Slow Networks, Interval

A collision of technologies of the information age and older, slower networks of the industrial past. Join Interval as they set out on a barge journey along Manchester's canal network, hosting a selection of digital projects in this 'mobile media' space. Live work created aboard the boat will be streamed over a custom-built wireless network and projected inside a shipping container located at the Museum of Science and Industry. Relocate from network time to 'not-work' time, get swept away over Manchester's glittering waters, and join the flotsam and jetsam of barge culture. Featuring collaborations with SoundNetwork and Bandung Center for New Media Arts.

With
Graham Clayton-Chance
Katie Davies
Joe Duffy
Karen Gaskill
Gary Peploe
Katy Woods

21-24 July 10am - 4pm, Bridgewater Canal & Museum of Science and Industry
(Slate Wharf is over Merchant's Bridge, opposite BarÇa, Catalan Square, Castlefield)
Barge sailings start on Friday 21st, and embark from Slate Wharf approximately every 11/2 hrs, 4x daily, and are free.
Preview 20 July 6-8pm, Slate Wharf, Bridgewater Canal, Castlefield Basin.
www.interval.org.uk

mimoSa - An urban intervention and information correction machine

mimoSa have been mapping Brazilian cities since 2005 through 'urban interventions'. Using these special machines built by local people from found objects and makeshift electronics, mimoSa re-appropriate technology to reveal places, people and their tales in a new light. They bring their project to the UK for the first time, and will collaborate with local group UHC to help build their Manchester 'urban intervention machine' and to take part in an intervention in the city. Supported by Visiting Arts.
Various times and locations
Artist Meeting: Midday 21 July,
Auditorium, Museum of Science and Industry
http://turbulence.org/Works/mimoSa

Luncheon on the Barge, Bandung Center for New Media Arts

Gustaff Iskandar will visit Manchester to navigate Manchester's alternative and outsider urban cultures, documenting the city's sites and sounds, and discovering new collaborators. A part of an international series of projects exploring hidden urban cultures in cities across Asia, Helsinki and now Manchester. Wandering the lost corners of Manchester's river and canals, Gustaff Iskandar will then take participants on a journey of casual discovery, exploring the experiences of city life in Manchester and Bandung Indonesia. Steering away from structured formality and concept, Luncheon on the Barge uses informal discussion and learning to critically confront layers of urban situations in Bandung and Manchester in a comparative study of these city environments. Organised in collaboration with Interval, Fast and Slow Networks, this work is the preliminary study for a broader conversation project on the theme of city. Supported by Visiting Arts.
Barge trip, 21 July 2006, 2-5pm
Slate Wharf, Bridgewater Canal
Plus various times and places
http://commonroom.info/bcfnma/futuresonic2006/index.html

Manchester : Peripheral; Alastair Dant, Tom Davis & David Gunn.

Featured in the Off The Map strand of Futuresonic, Manchester : Peripheral is driven by collaborative creativity. With extensive community engagement via local groups and their informal social networks, the artists empower local residents to create their own audio portrait of the area. These sounds are then used as part of an online SoundMap tool where visitors remix these sounds to create their own compositions. Visitors are also encouraged to save and share their mixes and to submit their own sounds for inclusion on the site. In this way, the artists seek to create an ongoing relationship of collaborative creativity with the wider community.

SoundNetwork

SoundNetwork, a new network for artists using sound in the NorthWest of England, will be presenting an innovative programme of work from their membership for Futuresonic 2006. Performances, installations, interventions and collaborations will show off the fascinating work of sound artists and musicians in the region and beyond.

The container installed for Interval's Fast and Slow Networks will become a project space collaboratively programmed between SoundNetwork and Interval. The result, NetworkContainer, will feature a collaboration between 3 Interval artists and 3 SoundNetwork artists, interacting with audio and video feeds, including sound from hydrophones trailed from barge, and playing with the difference in speed of communication between the barge journeys and the wireless network.

With
Daniel Barrett
Mark Pilkington
Samantha Jones
Greg Byatt
Alexandre DeCoupigney
Rob Munro
a.P.A.t.T.
Stefan Löwenstein
Yolanda Spínola
Ailis Ni Riain
Rogue Wave

Museum of Science and Industry
21-23 July, 10am - 5pm
soundnetwork.omweb.org

UHC Art Collective

Manchester's art / activist collective collaborate with mimoSa in building an 'urban intervention machine', plus act as guide to Gustaff H. Iskandar as he navigates Manchester's alternative and outsider urban cultures. UHC (Ultimate Holding Company) is an inter-disciplinary Art Collective, based in Manchester in the UK. Founded in 2002, they work collaboratively over multiple media and run a not-for-profit workers co-op, specialising in ethical graphic design and visual communications. In 2003 UHC Art Collective erected a full sized replica of Camp X-Ray in the centre of Manchester UK, supported by Arts Council England. The camp was staffed by volunteer "prisoners" and "guards" and ran for 9 days.
Various times and locations
Talk and Workshop: Midday 21 July,
Auditorium, Museum of Science and Industry
http://www.uhc-collective.org.uk