Drew Hammet at Sonar

Futuresonic International Festival

(via: we-make-money-not-art) Drew Hemment created the Futuresonic International Festival in 1995. As AHRC Research Fellow at University of Salford, he developed Loca, a collaborative arts-based project on mobile media and surveillance. He is also a founder member of PLAN – The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network.

According to Drew Hemment, we’ve arrived at a crucial moment. In 2003, Locative Media technologies were mostly in the hands of programmers and artists. Some social and art project that were still conceptual a few years ago are now coming into the mainstream. Now the situation is evolving. He gave two examples from the UK: mobile phone operator O2 is now offering Streetmap. What was being discussed and done in small workshop (e.g. PLAN) is now developed on large scale and polished by a major mobile phone operator. The other example is satellite navigation: Google Earth is now a concept that most people grasp.

Futuresonic, an international conference will explore the implications of RFID on July 21-22 in Manchester UK.

[ www.futuresonic.com ]