Two years after Futuresonic's ground breaking Mobile Connections exhibition, we return to the theme to consider how evolving mobile, locative and mapping technologies, often created by independent developers working collaboratively with open source tools, are opening up new cultural possibilities across the world.

20-29 July, The Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester
Click here for featured projects in the Off The Map exhibition.

Off The Map offers a hundred ways to get involved with the world around you. Start with dramatic new visions of space and place - Satellite Jockey's sky high remix soaring above cities and desert landscapes, mix Google Earth's monumental image galleries yourself with Everybody Is A Satellite Jockey, cross-stitching craft industries and GPS technology in Distance Made Good, the social dramas of Biomapping and Amsterdam RealTime, or even the beautiful noise of GPS interference in re:draw:III

But don't think you can just sit back and watch. Jump in and cultivate your own deciduous music with the Tactical Sound Garden, or put your gameface on to play RFID Snakes and Ladders or a quick round of sardines with Speckled Jewellery (yes, you read that correctly). Take a nap, eat some chocolate and then get back into the driving seat - confound your Festival enemies with the surprise sounds of BUMP, or remix the noises and voices of the city into your own soundtrack with Manchester : Peripheral. Not tired yet? How about walking the city with renowned artists in Getting To The Point, or even trusting your well being to Virtual Hiker.

Digital Media festivals tend to bring together some unusual characters, and Futuresonic is no exception. So keep your eyes open for some of the strangest - feral robot dogs with an enlightened environmental conscience (Urban Tapestries), mobile phones with a Liberace complex (IMPROVe), and an artist taking medical swabs from her own personal technology (Phone Flora).

And don't imagine this work exists in a vacuum - from the anti-copyright actions of OpenStreetMap and Mapchester to the surveillance-paranoia of The Catalogue, and the urgent political activism of Thousand Points Of Light, this is a constellation of work that exists resolutely in the real world - and dramatically influences it.

And at the end of it all, if you forget anything, Waag Society will be creating their locative documentation of the whole event. So, don your mental hiking boots, throw away your Ordinance Surveys and get lost in Manchester for the weekend!