[spectre] Use Your Imagination-find your new collaborative partner

[Drew Hemment]

Come find your new collaborative partner at ...

USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Friday 11 May, 10am-6pm
Manchester
www.futuresonic.com/07/imagination.html

Leading figures from around the world are converging on Manchester  
for Use Your Imagination, a unique one-day event presented by  
Imagination at Lancaster, Lancaster University's new interdisciplinary  
research institute, as a part of the Social Technologies Summit and  
Futuresonic 2007 Urban Festival of Art, Music and Ideas.

The event sets out to :

- Inspire people with the possibilities of interdisciplinary  
collaboration /
- Show artists what engineers get excited about, and vice versa /
- Enable people to meet in structured and informal ways /
- Seed new collaborations.

Delegate Pass £45; Student Delegate Pass £10
https://www.ticketzone.co.uk/blocks.cfm?shownumber=4975

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ART & SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES

A man falls in slow motion from a high building. Upon impact the  
concrete paving gives way and ripples in concentric waves as it  
absorbs the energy of his fall. The key creative at Saatchi & Saatchi  
behind the celebrated T Mobile TV adverts, which feature flexible  
cityscapes and collapsing walls, will explain how they capture  
compelling new ideas. The urban environment is being transformed by  
emerging technologies - the ground beneath our feet is no longer  
hard, but 'soft', as in 'software'.

He will join other leading figures from around the world converging  
on Manchester for Use Your Imagination.

We live in an age when the future of the next few hundred years is  
being written. Just as the printing press and the steam engine  
changed history, so the decisions made now about the design of the  
technologies we use will shape our lives tomorrow. It is not just  
scientists who are engineering this future, but artists and DIY  
technologists also. And we are now at a moment when these ideas are  
breaking out of small labs and art events.

Presentations by leading international figures on case studies of  
collaborations between artists and engineers will be followed by a  
participatory workshop which aims to introduce you to your next life  
partner, creating a space in which new collaborations can be hatched,  
or at the least enabling you to leave with some new contacts and  
feeling inspired.

Followed by Manchester's first Dorkbot, a show-and-tell event for  
people doing strange things with electricity.

____

USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Friday 11 May, 10am-6pm
Contact Theatre, Manchester
www.futuresonic.com/07/imagination.html

Participants include:

Anne Galloway (Carleton University Ottawa)
Charlie Gere (Lancaster University)
Steve Dietz (YProductions)
Nina Wakeford (INCITE)
Giles Lane (Proboscis)
Eric Paulos (Intel Research)
Paul Domenet (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Linda Doyle (Trinity College Dublin)
Alan Dix (Lancaster University)
Drew Hemment (Lancaster University)
Kristina Andersen (STEIM)
Laura Watts (Lancaster University)

____

IMAGINATION at LANCASTER
Creativity and innovation occurs at the boundaries... the conception,  
production, management and use of our 'material world' increasingly  
relies on the convergence of science, technology, social science,  
arts and humanities. Nanotechnology, intelligent materials, ambient,  
mobile, ubiquitous and visualisation technologies provide  
opportunities for the convergences of the products we use, the  
clothes wear, the places in which we live and work, and the media we  
engage with for work and leisure. In order to create this material  
world we must have the visualisation and creative skills to access  
and combine the technologies, but also an understanding of  
sustainability; the social, economic, and environmental factors, as  
well as an insight into production, management and historical contexts.

Plan :
To work with leading designers and innovators across the globe to  
build an 'Imagination Laboratory', to enable people and organisations  
to engage with academia in a dynamic and creative way, using time and  
space to research and imagine futures. The laboratory would be part  
of a global network of similar places to enable virtual as well as co- 
located engagement in research and development.

____

FUTURESONIC &
IMAGINATION at LANCASTER

Use Your Imagination itself involves an unusual collaboration. A link  
has been established between the Futuresonic festival and  
Imagination at Lancaster, a major new interdisciplinary research  
institute at Lancaster University, with the appointment of Drew  
Hemment, Futuresonic's director and founder, as Associate Director of  
the new research institute.

A shared aim is to seed new interdisciplinary collaborations, which  
is a focus of the Use Your Imagination event, as well as provide  
pathways for further research at postgraduate level.

We invite you to be a part of this.

__________________

A part of
FUTURESONIC 2007
www.futuresonic.com
Manchester UK
10-12 May

The Futuresonic 2007 Urban Festival of Art, Music and Ideas features  
300 artists and over 30 major events.

Download Brochure (PDF/9.5mb)
www.futuresonic.com/ftp/FS07_brochure.pdf

____


TICKET INFO
http://www.futuresonic.com/07/bookings.html

DELEGATE PASS
https://www.ticketzone.co.uk/blocks.cfm?shownumber=4975
(includes £30 Weekender Wristband)
£45

STUDENT DELEGATE PASS
https://www.ticketzone.co.uk/blocks.cfm?shownumber=4975
£10

++Fixed number of Day Passes available each day on a Pay-What-You-Can  
basis.

The Delegate Pass gives you access to the Social Technologies Summit,
all Futuresonic seminars and talks, and all Futuresonic Live and  
Urban Play
events over the festival weekend.

Conference places limited - advance booking essential.