FUTURESONIC 2007 10-12 May, Manchester UK http://www.futuresonic.com

Futuresonic, the urban festival of electronic arts and music, is moving from July to May, back to the Spring date it occupied in 2004.

See below for next year's highlights and special advance discounts on delegate passes.

FUTUREVISUAL http://www.futurevisual.org

In 2007 the centrepiece of Futuresonic Live will be a celebration of all things audiovisual and a homage to 40 years of multimedia events.

40 years ago there were the first multimedia events of the kind that we would understand today. While the rest of the world was celebrating the soft-centred Summer of Love, a fusion of artforms and a crossover between avant garde and popular was taking place. This was the moment when events like Futuresonic became possible...

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of these seminal events, Futuresonic Live goes back to the future - revisiting one of the inspirations of the first Futuresonic festival in 1996 - to look at the cutting edge of immersive sound and image today.

URBAN PLAY http://www.urban-play.org

Urban Play is the art and technology strand of the festival featuring exhibitions, workshops and interactive projects in the city streets. It was introduced in Futuresonic's 10th anniversary year, reflecting Futuresonic's focus since 2004 on artworks in urban space, and has since been mirrored in other events in the UK and Europe.

Thirty years after Brian Eno's MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS, Futuresonic 2007's Urban Play presents ART FOR SHOPPING CENTRES, an exhibition of interactive artworks in a major shopping centre.

Urban Play will also feature FREE-MEDIA activities in association with Mongrel, MediaShed and Access Space, including a UK first implementation of the free-media Video Toolkit developed by MediaShed and Eyebeam (more TBA).

EVNTS http://www.futuresonic.com/07/evnts.html

A competition and showcase for the best new and ground breaking events from around the world.

EVNTS is a strand of the Futuresonic festival which enables artist groups and event organisers to participate in the festival. Since its introduction in 2005, EVNTS has grown into a community of people who each year return to give the festival an extra edge.

INVITATION FOR SUBMISSIONS: Futuresonic now invites anyone working in music or media arts to take part in EVNTS 2007, with the EVNT Competition offering financial support for a limited number of events.

For further details announced soon. Visit www.futuresonic.com/07/ evnts.html for more info, or sign up to Futuresonic's subscriber list to receive regular updates.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT http://www.socialtechsummit.org

A major international conference exploring the creative and social potential of new technologies, bringing together leading figures to explore "a whole new way of doing things in the air".

In 2007 a focus of the Social Technologies Summit is FREE-MEDIA. Free- media is about finding inspiration and resources in our built and natural environment that were previously dismissed as being without value or irrelevant. It doesn't cost much because it makes use of public domain Free and Open Source Software, and recycles freely available old equipment, waste materials and junk (FOSS). Free-media increases access to media technologies, especially to the people who need it most and can afford it the least, and lowers environmental impact of the media we produce and consume.

The 2007 Summit will also host a network meeting for ENVIRONMENT 2.0, a new initiative joining the dots between locative media and environmental calamity, being launched by Futuresonic to assess and offset the environmental footprint of future arts and culture.

And it will play host to THE MAP DESIGNERS, an event drawing together map hackers, artists, cartographers, DIY technologists, architects, game programmers, bloggers and semantic web philosophers.

Delegate Pass - Advance discount available. See Below.

GET INVOLVED! http://www.futuresonic.com/07/get_involved

Visit the website or subscribe to Futuresonic updates for upcoming calls for submissions, job offers and volunteering opportunities.

ADVANCE DELEGATE PASS DISCOUNT ... SAVE £20 http://www.futuresonic.com/07/bookings.html

Delegate Pass - £25 (Normally £45)

The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. You must reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and make payment by January 31st 2007. To reserve email tickets2007@futuresonic.com stating your name, address and contact details. You will be sent purchasing information from the festival box office by January 8th 2007.

*Futuresonic 2007 may burn when exposed to oxygen.