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Drew Hemment: From FutureSonic to Future Everything

I didn’t give it much thought right after the event, but my experience of Futuresonic has so far appeared to always connect to some kind of a festival’s anniversary. Back in 2006, when I attended it for the first time, the participants were trailing the city, carrying balloons with the Futuresonic logo. In 2006, the festival was in its tenth calendar year, so there was a good reason to celebrate. 2006, too, saw the first Social Technologies Summit. I vividly remember Last.fm debuting there. Geolocation and mapping have already been in the focus, and Stanislav Roudavski, a Russian-born, UK-based architect, artist and researcher, shared the insights into what now seems to make Performative Places. In 2006, I was able to review Manchester Peripheral before it officially debuted during the first Manchester International Festival, and it was pleasant to see David Gunn returning to Futuresonic in 2009, with Echo Archive commission from Opera North. Back in the day, David was involved in Folk Songs project, particularly collaborating with Victor Gama, an Angolan-Portuguese composer, on two projects: Folk Songs for the Five Points (2005) and Cinco Cidades (2007). Victor himself, who not only composes music but also makes instruments, was exhibiting at Futuresonic 2006 with his Pangeia Intrumentos.

That festival alone orchestrated a major change in my life. I grew up without the Internet. I didn’t even have a computer well until I was 18. I never really prepared myself to the Internet-led future. Of course, I became proficient with applications and programs that were necessary for my work, but with Social Media still emerging in 2006, I was on the sceptical side. Yet the frustration from not being able to do everything I wanted in the radio environment was growing, and I had already started updating the (now discontinued AOL Homepage) website of a radio programme with short stories, links, poems, quotes… yet I was limited in space on the page, so I had to come up with another idea. The idea culminated in Los Cuadernos and in turn led to many happy, encouraging, amazing, unexpected, and ultimately enlightening, beginnings, meeting, and projects.

Three years later I returned to Futuresonic, this time primarily for Social Technologies Summit, granted I was a delegate. As a result, my impression of the festival is very different: it’s more about technology than art or music. I was more focused on the summit than in 2006; and in 2009, I was an active user of social technologies, hence Identity and Trust or Semantic Web talks were the ones where I naturally found myself actively participating – via Twitter, no less. I was also a more “engaged” or even “embedded” attendant, since I knew more people at the festival than in the previous years. And suddenly it turned out that Futuresonic was once again marking the anniversary: it was the official 10th edition of the festival, although it wasn’t celebrated. But it was also a goodbye to Futuresonic and a hello to Future Everything.

Is there a sprinkle of nostalgy in what I’ve written? There isn’t, and there is. Certainly, there is nothing that I regret, and I wholeheartedly wish that the festival continues growing stronger and even more creative under the new name. On Friday 15 May, I made several impromptu interviews at the festival, which will finally begin to appear here; one of them was with Drew Hemment, the artistic director of the festival, who kindly agreed to a quick chat after a long day at the conference. We talked in 2006, too, and on second thoughts I decided to make both interviews available. They were made in different times of the day: in 2006 we talked in the afternoon; in 2009, it was after 7pm. The changes in skills and voices is audible, too. But one of the questions I asked Drew in 2009 was about special moments, and how they all combined influence the person. For him as the organiser, there were many such moments, and ultimately it’s the journey that one makes that matters and that creates everything that is special about Futuresonic. So, in what I’ve written there’s not really any nostalgy… it’s just the desire and hope to stay on the road and to continue with the journey.

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One last thing, which I can only see myself saying on this blog – not in Future Everything Community, for integrity reason… I’m not from Manchester originally, and arrived fairly late to be influenced by the late Tony Wilson. I know who he was, of course, and I’m aware that he’s often praised for pioneering many things, including the proliferation of the digital technologies in the city. As you will hear Drew saying in 2006, one of the reasons Futuresonic landed in Manchester, and not London or Glasgow, was the strength of Manchester’s music culture that had already had a digital/electronic dimension. But just last year at The Circle Club they were searching for the next Tony Wilson. As much as I’m not at ease with this (and any similar) quest, I can’t help thinking that Manchester is throwing away its own baby. Having emerged nearly at the same time as Hacienda vanished in the haze, Futuresonic has been around for over 10 years. Drew’s humility and passion for the festival and the projects he curates are admirable, and I hope he doesn’t lose that in the years to come. Maybe it’s good if Futuresonic continues as a fairly independent event, shunning away from the media hype, attracting the true enthusiasts, and subtly changing the lives of the new attendees. I only hope that, when time comes, Drew’s trouble-making skills will receive the recognition they deserve.

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