Futuresonic is an annual festival

Festival

A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....

 of art, music and ideas. It involves a freeform mix of live events, exhibitions, workshops and talks in up to 30 different venues and spaces across Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, UK. Futuresonic was established in 1995 with the first major festival in September 1996. It has since presented projects in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

Featured Artists

Featured musicians include 4hero, Apparat (musician)

Apparat (musician)

Apparat is a German electronic musician living in Berlin and was previously a co-owner of Shitkatapult records. Starting out with dance floor-oriented techno, he later started to create ambient music and more recently became "more interested in designing sounds than beats".In 2004, he appeared at...

, Battles

Battles (band)

Battles is an American experimental rock group, founded in 2002 in New York City, comprising guitarists Ian Williams and Dave Konopka , and drummer John Stanier .-Biography:...

, Cristian Vogel

Cristian Vogel

Cristian Vogel is an experimental electronic musician.-Biography:Cristian Vogel was born in Chile and moved to England in the mid 1970s. Vogel first began working with electronic compositions in the late 1980s with the Cabbage Head Collective...

, Faust

Faust (band)

Faust are a German krautrock band. Formed in 1971 in Wümme, the group was originally composed of Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, Hans Joachim Irmler, Arnulf Meifert, Jean-Hervé Péron, Rudolf Sosna and Gunther Wüsthoff, working with record producer Uwe Nettelbeck and engineer Kurt Graupner.-History:Faust...

, Christian Fennesz

Christian Fennesz

Christian Fennesz is an Austrian guitarist active in electronic music, often credited on albums simply as Fennesz....

, Graham Massey, Jamie Lidell

Jamie Lidell

Jamie Lidell is an English musician and soul singer living in Nashville, United States...

, Kaffe Matthews, King Britt

King Britt

King Britt is an American DJ and record producer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.King Britt is his actual legal name.- 1987: Tower Records Years :...

, Ladytron

Ladytron

Ladytron are an English electronic band formed in 1999 in Liverpool, Merseyside. The group consists of Helen Marnie , Mira Aroyo , Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu .Their sound blends electropop with New Wave and shoegazing elements. Ladytron described their sound as "electronic pop"...

, Lee Ranaldo

Lee Ranaldo

Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...

, Matthew Herbert

Matthew Herbert

Matthew Herbert , also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is a British electronic musician...

, Merzbow

Merzbow

is the main recording name of the Japanese noise musician , born in 1956. Since 1979 he has released in excess of 350 recordings.The name "Merzbow" comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork, "Merzbau”. This was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic...

, Mouse On Mars

Mouse on Mars

Mouse on Mars is a duo from Germany who have been making electronic music since 1993. Their music is a sometimes quirky blend of IDM, krautrock, disco, and ambient with a heavy dollop of analog synth sounds and cross-frequency modulation...

, Rhythm n' Sound, Def Jux ft. RJD2

RJD2

RJD2 is an American music producer, singer and musician. RJD2 was born in Eugene, Oregon, and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was signed to the Definitive Jux label where he released two largely instrumental hip hop albums and has produced tracks...

, Semiconductor, Shy Child

Shy Child

Shy Child are an electronic music duo from New York consisting of Pete Cafarella on vocals and synthesizers and Nate Smith on drums.-History:Shy Child formed in the summer of 2000, when former college friends Pete Cafarella and Nate Smith separately moved to New York...

, Skream

Skream

Skream is a dubstep producer based in Croydon. One of dubstep's first and most prominent producers, he has played an important role in the genre's development. His debut album Skream! was released in 2006, and was followed up by Outside the Box in 2010...

, Sleeparchive, Wolfgang Flur

Wolfgang Flür

Wolfgang Flür is a German musician, best known as a member of the electronic group Kraftwerk, from 1973 to 1987, playing electronic percussion...

.

Art and digital culture participants include onedotzero

Onedotzero

onedotzero is a contemporary, digital arts organisation with a remit to promote innovation across all forms of moving image and motion arts....

, Access Space, Akitsugu Maebayashi, Alexei Shulgin

Alexei Shulgin

Alexei Shulgin is a Russian born contemporary artist, musician, and online curator. Working out of Moscow and Helsinki, Shulgin established the Immediate Photography Group in 1988 and started his career in this area of study...

, Blast Theory, Augustine Leudar

Augustine Leudar

Augustine Leudar is a sonic artist, known for unorthodox and anarchic soundscapes and ambient music. Leudar frequently cites the natural world as an important source of inspiration.-History:...

, Christa Sommerer, Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel is a Brooklyn, New York artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance,, and video game modifications, for which he is perhaps best known...

, Graham Harwood, Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki is a German filmmaker.He has made over 90 films, the vast majority of them short experimental documentaries...

, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Light Surgeons, LoVid, Marko Peljhan, Masaki Fujihata

Masaki Fujihata

Masaki Fujihata is a Japanese sound and installation artist and a professor at Keio University.- External links :*...

, Olia Lialina

Olia Lialina

Olia Lialina is a pioneer Internet artist and theorist as well as an experimental film and video critic and curator...

, Owl Project, Sadie Plant

Sadie Plant

Sadie Plant is a British author and philosopher.She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1989, then taught at the University of Birmingham's Department of Cultural Studies before going on to found the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick,...

, Shu Lea Cheang, Toshio Iwai

Toshio Iwai

is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design.-Education and early work:...

, Zachary Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman is an American artist and computer programmer. His art work focuses around computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and computer vision....

.

Projects

• Futuresonic projects include:
• Environment 2.0 (2007-onwards)
• Art For Shopping Centres (2007)
• Futurevisual (2007)
• Manchester Peripheral (2007)
• Social Technologies Summit (2006-onwards)
• Music For The Beep Generation (2006)
• Off The Map (2006)
• Maphester (2006)
• Instrument (2006)
• Urban Play (2005-onwards)
• EVNTS (2005-onwards)
• Low Grade (2005)
• Mobile Connections (2004)
• Turntable Re:mix (2004)
• Migrations and Eurodac Express (2002/3)
• Blacktronica (2002)
• Sensurround (2001/2)
• BrokenChannel (2001)
• Women in Electronica (2000-1)
• Audiovision (2000)
• SenseSonic (1999)
• Sub.merge (1998)

Organiser

Futuresonic is presented by FutureEverything CIC, a non-profit creative 'community interest company'. It is registered with Companies House UK and regulated by the CIC Regulator. Futuresonic has been awarded Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) status by Arts Council England

Arts Council England

Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

. The founder and Artistic Director of Futuresonic is Drew Hemment.