McArndale Rubbishthing

FutureEverything 2011 launched itself last night with free vodka, more free vodka and a smattering of free vodka.

I'm covering this year's festival from a non-geek perspective, and so far, I'm safe. The launch was friendly, personal and, when it came to FE founder Drew Hemmett talking about arts funding, thoughtful.

FE, you see, got a wad of cash while places like the Greenroom are closing: not for the first time, Drew's speech reflected Manchester's pain with great sensitivity.

FutureEverything has its own base this year. It's at Four Piccadilly Place, which you will spot if you stand in Piccadilly Gardens, stand on the tram tracks and choo-choo your way to the train station. You will spot the FE building as the track falls to the right as it takes you towards UMIST.

The launch was a great chance to catch The Data Dimension, a meditation on data visualisation that you can see in the space for the next ten days. I'll finish this blog post with some pictures from that exhibition.

Meanwhile, I have two days of being afraid of all things geeky as I become a proper FutureEverything conference delegate. Pop this in your bookmarks. I'll keep you updated, dear reader, but if I am arrested within the next 48 hours for feasting on the brains of unsuspecting computer scientists, you know it hasn't gone well.

This is Nathalie Miebach's chemistry-set take on a blizzard, taken from meteorological data

 

This is a map of Iraq expressed as the number of news stories in the Guardian, courtesy of the BBC.

Adam Nieman's morphing map of views about Manchester. I didn't quite capture a bubble that swung across the landscape declaring that the Arndale is rubbish.

Twelve still-life paintings analysed for their nutritional content by Nadeem Haidary. Van Gogh's onions provided a nice little punchline (oo-er missus).

Here's about half of the launch room. During a talk from someone from the Arts Council (probably: I wasn't listening), I set off a really loud exhibit and interrupted the speech.

Interior Design: Music For The Bionic Ear by Robin Fox. This is bloody brilliant and I could have listened to this for ages.

Beautiful and sinister, Kimchi and Chips' Lit Tree is a tree that lights up as you waggle your vodka and cranberry juice underneath a camera.

Fat Roland On Electronica: track listing for the radio programme

Fat Roland On Electronica theme music: uses a sample from Autechre –See On See.

The sounds for the Rave Generator were constructed from samples of Orbital – The Girl With The Sun In Her Head and Moby – Thousand.

James Blake – CMYK

Clark – Future Daniel

Lorn – Cherry Moon

Instra:mental – Eight

Falty DL – Open Space

S>>D – Thirty Three

Squarepusher presents Shobaleader One – Megazine

Lone – Moon Beam Harp

Christian AIDS – Scum

Loop Guru samples: LFO – LFO; Aphex Twin – Father; James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream; The Prodigy – Speedway; Venga Boys – We Like To Party


Loop Guru track: Borland – Clockmen

Eskmo – Moving Glowstream

Matthew Dear – Slowdance

Rave Generator track: 808 State – Pacific State

Africa Hitech – Footstep

Raffertie – Rank Functions

Luke Abbott – Brazil

Battle Of The Computer Bands track (5th place): The Black Dog –  Train By The Autobahn Part 1

Battle Of The Computer Bands track (4th place): Future Sound Of London –  We Have Explosive

Battle Of The Computer Bands track (3rd place): Boards Of Canada – Chromakey Dreamcoat

Battle Of The Computer Bands track (2nd place but probably really technically joint 1st): Aphex Twin – We Are The Music Makers

Battle Of The Computer Bands track (1st place): Autechre – Clipper.

Fat Roland On Electronica: on air

Fat Roland On Electronia will become a radio programme for two hours on Thursday May 19th (tonight). It airs from 8-10pm on Chorlton FM for the Chorlton Arts Festival.

You can catch it on 87.7FM if you're within wheeling distance of Chorlton, Manchester.

You can also listen to the programme online on the Chorlton FM website.

The playlist can be found here, and you can keep up with all things radio by following the blog tag 'the radio programme'.

Oysterthing Pandarubbish

Diving into my first full day of the FutureEverything festival was like springboarding into a swimming pool of motherboards, microchips and pliers. It looks different, but it's painful on first contact and is difficult to navigate through.

It was certainly a far call from my last trip to the event when it was called FutureSonic and it had weirdos circuit-bending into Gameboys at the Contact Theatre. Now, it was all about data, meta-data and, um, whatever comes after meta-data.

Still, for every couple of sessions that befuddled me, there was one that pricked my ears. I learned about 'things that no longer exist', which talked about objects being made up of the real world and the data world. For example, an Oyster card is partly physical card but is mostly invisible data.

And so we had objects made up of material and memories (a stripey pink jumper with a barbeque smell), to Poltergiest (the film, not an actual one) and Heidegger's profound observation that the "Old High German word 'thing' means a gathering."

The Guardian did a couple of sessions. One, about data and journalism, reminded us that it's all about people and not just machines, although the people in this instance provided a disorganised and dull seminar.

Another session, about robots and editors, was brilliant and equated Trip Advisor reviews with stepping on other people's experiences, declared that robots were evil and had a magical rainbow-vomiting panda.

Anyhoo, in the evening, I went to see Fucked Up. It was an alarming mixture of extremism, love, danger and inclusivity. I'd liken it to the best rave moments at Sankey's Soap and, I think, solidified Islington Mill's reputation as one of the best venues around.

That is, if the venue still exists. The audience insisted on trying to pull the roof down (hence the lead singer's worried "guys, those are water pipes" announcement near the end of the show).

Not much to photograph today, but here goes...

The Fucked Up lead singer spent most of the time grabbing the crowd, including me. This photo is by Andrew Fisher.

The magical rainbow-vomiting panda pair had some brilliant visuals.

Look! Punk pigeons in the Northern Quarter!  I told you I didn't have many photos.

Now I'm getting desperate. Honest, there'll be more photos on my next FutureEverything roundup.

A temporary blog hiatus...

...until Blogger solves their problem.

I spent ages on a post yesterday, including some lovely pictures from the launch of FutureEverything. Because Blogger tackled their gremlins by rolling back their site to the previous day, my post disappeared and I'm still waiting for it to return.

They seem to think my blog post will be restored. But rather than continue blogging about FutureEverything (and other everythings) into a bottomless pit of Bluggerdom, I'm holding off.

I hope it won't be long. Watch this space.

Edit: well done, Blogger. I'm restored and ready to catch up with my blogging over the weekend.

McFuture Tuckything

FutureEverything does not make sense. The programme is full of things like 'urban friction', 'global data' and things about circuits. I'm the type of person who uses boxing gloves to type so no-one can steal my passwords: this is way too geeky for me.

Which is why I'm going to the FutureEverything conference. I'm going to 'Fat Roland' everything, if 'Fat Roland' is a verb that means to have a drunk, aggressive fat man constantly interrupt a session on the challenges of connectivity in computerised urban iconomical sound environment with bawled phrases such as as "I HAD A COMPUTER ONCE", "TWITTER IS WELL GAY" and "HOW FAR IS IT TO McTUCKY'S?"

I have penned 24 circles in my festival brochure, and I will probably:

(a) attend five of them;
(b) of which three I will leave crying;
(c) of which at least two will result in the calling-in of the fire service, mountain rescue and the Thunderbirds.

Truth is, I bid for my FutureEverything delegate pass at Twestival by donating some money to the excellent Wood Street Mission. So if you want a few blog updates on the FutureEverything conference from a vaguely appreciative but mostly overwhelmed non-geek, this is the place to be.

But seriously, are we near McTucky's, because I'm starving...

An, um, official statement from Aphex Twin on his rumoured new album

Battle of the Computer Bands: the great radio programme electronic music poll

Edit: Voting is suspended. No more votes on the blog, please. You can next vote tonight by contacting my radio programme from 8pm - 9pm, with the grand results being revealed from 9.30pm. Tune in to find out how.

If you know your Aphex Twin from your Orbital, then please take part in my poll.

Battle of the Computer Bands is a grand survey for my radio show in May. I'd like your list of who you think are the most important electronica artists of the last 20 years. A top five, decided by a points system, will be revealed on my radio programme, with some voters getting namechecks on air.

For details on how to vote, read on.

What you're voting on

When deciding on the most important electronica artists of the last 20 years, think of electronic music of the techno / IDM / Warp Records tradition, so no chart-topping pop / autotune pap. We're talking armchair techno onwards (1991 was the year of Orbital's green album, and a lot has happened since). It's not just about your favourites: think consistency and influence as well as general level of amazeballs.

My top artists would, for example, include Orbital, The Black Dog, 808 State, Flying Lotus, Underworld, Mu-Ziq, Aphex Twin, Burial, Autechre and Richard H Kirk among others, although I've not decided on an order yet. And anyway, I don't get to vote.

Need help choosing artists? Wikipedia has this history of IDM music to prompt you.

The rules

Here are the house rules:

- You can submit as many or as few names as you like, as long as they are ranked with the most important *first*. If you can only think of one, that is also fine. If it's a long list, I will probably only take notice of your first ten.

- Only one list per person. You cannot vote for your own project. Please don't vote-rig or get others to vote a certain way. Suspect lists will be eliminated, destroyed and then killed.

- If something is nowhere near IDM / electronica, that vote will be quietly ignored. How I judge this is entirely dependent on the amount of sleep / sex / Windowlene I've had.

- Voting will finish at 9pm on May 19th, an hour into the radio programme, with the results revealed between 9 and 10pm on air then, later, online.

- Any derision aimed at my Battle of the Computer Bands title will be met with the fact that I nearly called this poll Chorlton And The Bleepies, which makes even less sense.

How to vote

I'll leave you with details on how to vote. Go to it, chums!

- leave a comment on this post;
- tweet me @fatroland;
- email me: computerbands (at) fatroland.com;
- contact the programme when it's on air (details nearer the time) although lots of pre-show votes would be lovely.

Thanks, in advance!

Edit: Voting is suspended. No more votes on the blog, please. You can next vote tonight by contacting my radio programme from 8pm - 9pm, with the grand results being revealed from 9.30pm. Tune in to find out how.