The first item that appears on Google when you apply the term ‘The Future’ is Leonard Cohen, singing ‘get ready for the future, it is murder’ and ‘love is the only engine of survival’, in a clip from Jools Holland filmed in the 1990s.
If you google the phrase ‘the Future is Bright’, you’ll find a broadsheet feature on atheist literature, news stories about the mapping of the human genome & Aston Villa (not together), and that song by Timbuk3, ‘the future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades’. The lyrics were inspired by a conversation between a loved-up couple but the song is about nuclear holocaust.
48 hours searching the world of Future Everything, Manchester’s annual digital arts festival, leaves me optimistic. In a beautiful disused swimming pool, the ‘Handmade’ craft day at Victoria Baths on Saturday 13th May is a powerful reminder of how digital has helped us get more in touch with analogue. DIY digital knitting patterns, water-powered musical instruments, acrylic jewellery produced on a table-top printer, zine-culture, giant etch-a-sketch, collaborative online scarf projects… It’s apparent that far from driving us all into our bedrooms to stare with silent rage at lines of code, the influence of digital tools & techniques has been liberating for many crafters & participants. The craft movement has exploded, largely because of a collaborative cross-discipline ethos that combines older and newer technologies. How many people have watched a video of, or dabbled in making a cigar-box ukulele thanks to neo-crafters? (no? have a look here)
Back in the room, while the printer is whirring, stamping out acrylic shapes that we are encouraged to assemble, the glue has gone missing. It’s mission critical. I approach a group of people who are gathered in the centre of the room, a long long distance from anyone else. They hunt around helpfully but decide they don’t have glue either. ‘We’re the welders’, they explain. I nod sagely.
Meanwhile, a group huddled into a corner seem happily agitated. Presuming this to be the place where people are reunited with lost-adhesives I shuffle over. The floor is covered in water. People are gleefully stabbing their hands at a waterfall, creating musical notes on contact. Next to the waterfall, a man is running his hands across a tank of water. Each ripple and finger-wiggle causes a piano note to play. He tickles the water, and piano sounds cascade. The electronics expert eyes the rubber seal on the edge of the tank. ‘Please keep your other hand on the side of the tank’, he pleads gently.
Next door, the Gala Pool, originally the men’s bathing area & emptied of swimmers for the last time in the late 1990s, is filled with Antony Hall’s installation, a two-part piece called, ‘Physical Oscillators’. Viewers step down onto the floor of the disused pool, and walk amongst a flock of electric fans, each one no bigger than a walnut, suspended from the glass roof by long languid strings & propelled by their own mechanisms. Dozens of them rotate gently above our heads, flying around us rhythmically. I wonder if anyone has had to stifle the instinct to flap one away dismissively, but what captivates me more is the faces of people here, open-mouthed & smiling upwards at these curious insects, while speakers distribute the sounds of their fleeting proximity. Surrounded by tiles & portable air-cooling technology, in the belly of residential built-up Manchester, it’s hard to believe the lasting impression of this installation could be animal not mineral. It was, and that was the beauty of it.
In a nearby room, Antony demonstrates his other Physical Oscillators, a series of water-filled jam jars strung from the ceiling to form a perfect line at waist-height. He gathers them together paternally, takes a large baton of wood, and carefully persuades the jars to swing into action. We watch from the doorway as the humble jam jars appear to transform into an elegant trail of butterflies, and our mouths slump open, as though we’ve just entertained the notion of gravity or stumbled into a line-dancing class.
Images of the future often anticipate a world filled with scandalously glossy architecture. Future Everything reminded me that the future is only a minute away, and it will be as full of crumbling beauty as it is of new things that shift our daily rhythms, but equally that we are architects of our own ecosystem. When Victoria Baths opened, it provided washing facilities for people, serving a public need, offering accessible sanitation. The project was not cheap, and took years to achieve, but without doubt it made a positive social impact.
With the tools and knowledge we have here and now, a movement of people who favour sharing, and an appetite for adventure, just imagine what sort of world we could look back on next?
If you’d like to find out more about the projects showcased at Future Everything this year go to www.futureeverything.org or watch this video at www.fe-2011.org in which Drew Hemment describes the work the Festival has been involved in, with particular reference to disruptive technologies and open-data. Follow @FuturEverything on twitter
Victoria Baths is open from April to November in 2011 with monthly open days and weekly guided tours. Open Days are the first Sunday of the month – the next Open Day is Sunday 5th June and will include a performance by the Ordsall Acapella Singers. Weekly guided tours are held every Wednesday afternoon, from 2pm. Doors open 1.40pm. Cost is £5.50 (gift aid price) / £5 (standard price). No charge for Friends of Victoria Baths or children.
For more information visit www.victoriabaths.org.uk or follow @VictoriaBaths on twitter
Glad you enjoyed it! Did you catch any of the conference programme I lovingly curated for you?
Hi Imran, yes, I spent Friday at the Conference. Highly memorable was Bill Thompson bringing a funny, provocative and motivating end to the day. To prove how good his talk was, the room was still packed, at the end of a Friday afternoon. As usual with the Future Everything conference, I’d have liked to have spent 2 days there, and seen all the talks, but I really enjoyed those I saw – especially the project (I don’t have my notes to hand) that broadcast re-recorded mobile phone messages (left by the public, re-recorded by actors) – to explore the observation that we express very intimate things to each other by phone, in the most public of places. I was buoyed on by Katy Beale (& colleagues) talk about Culture Hack events – working with traditional arts organisations and viewing them through creative use & manipulation of their own data, or locking their staff in with techies to see what happens. Looking forward to more of that!