GloNet is a new model for group-to-group globally networked events.
At a time when volcanic ash shows us the fragility of international travel, and global warming is forcing us to reduce air miles, we need to find new ways to be globally connected.
GloNet (Globally Networked Event)
FutureEverything is creating a new type of Globally Networked Event, or GloNet, shifting from a single city festival to one taking place simultaneously at cities around the globe. Live events in five cities use experimental formats to bring real and virtual audiences together around a central theme through talks, performances, an art installation and networked social spaces, all in one day and spanning five time zones. In each participating city we have a venue and remote groups, and we are networking social spaces, both physical and virtual. This is something new, it is not one-to-many (Broadcast) or many-to-many (Internet), but group-to-group (GloNet).
For our next festival in May 2010, FutureEverything is developing a prototype in partnership with the British Council, Distance Lab, and ImaginationLancaster. We are collaborating with partners in Sendai, Japan; Istanbul, Turkey; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Vancouver, Canada. We have designed bespoke technology solutions, interaction forms, and event formats. We are developing a network of project champions to participate in the satellite events, and in one case, are running a residency exchange between the cities. The goal is that the GloNet will be a permanent feature at the FutureEverything festival, and an event format with our partners we can replicate, and continue to develop, in other settings.
The Vision
Festivals need to find new ways to be globally connected and to cut air miles. Our modest aim is to create a new kind of global event, an international exemplar for new forms of culture and communication that are only possible via networked infrastructure.
GMT is an ideal location to create a new kind of global event as in a day we can connect with both Asia and the Americas. Therefore globally networked events centred on GMT can create a bridge and content pipe between participants around the globe.
GloNet 2010: Sendai, Istanbul, Manchester, Sao Paulo, Vancouver
We believe this will be an increasingly important event format, and that in coming years we will see a new generation of events doing something similar. The only similar event we know of happening right now is electrosmog in Amsterdam led by Adam Hyde, Eric Kluitenberg and others.
Our vision is to find new ways to stage events, which enhance the essence of eventness, not losing the magic of being with a group of people in the same place and at the same time. Simultaneity, co-presence, face-to-face interaction are all vital ingredients in events, and we are looking for ways to combine these in networked events, both within and between the remote groups.
GloNet is about group-to-group interaction. Globally networked events do not happen in one place, but in many places, simultaneously. They involve remote connection, collaboration and shared experience. They are simultaneous, yet not at the same ‘local time’, occurring over time and across timezones. Our goal is to experiment by seeing what happens to the character of events when you change configurations of people, place and time.
People recognise today that informal spaces and informal interactions are the most important part of events. This lies behind the rise in user-led formats such as open space, unconferences, and barcamps. We aim to capture this in GloNet by networking the social spaces as well as the formal programme. People can spill out of the venues, to connect and chat with people in cafes and bars at the remote venues. Additionally, artists shall be commissioned to create telepresence portals between the audiences in the remote sites.
GloNet is not only group-to-group connectivity, it is also place-to-place connectivity. It is about networking cities, across timezones and cultures. We are not just sending a feed out into the aether, but connecting places and creating city networks.
Development
In late 2009, FutureEverything launched a project to explore how we could creatively use telepresence and teleconferencing to transform our festival. It came out of our digital innovation lab, Unlimited Connectivity, looking at the potential of remote collaboration and high speed networking, and was inspired by past work on sustainability, which showed that audience and artist air travel accounted for over 90% of the festival’s carbon footprint.
Events involve a group of people coming together, at one time, and in one place. There are an infinite variety of configurations of event, different combinations of content, people, technology and place. Often broadcasters now talk in terms of events in programming, its all about seasons not schedules. Museums now talk about festivals not just exhibitions. When we boil it down, its not just about culture, our whole lives are made up of events.
The internet, and mobile media, have rewired our cities, our relationships with one another, and our ways of communicating, consuming and producing. In a post-Broadcast one-to-many age, our lives have been transformed by the Internet and many-to-many. With the internet we can now network people and things around the world. High-end teleconferencing has not advanced much for years, the innovation has been at the low-end. This can be seen in the popularity and technical finesse of skype and other ‘low-end’ video conferencing solutions.
The easy way to do a globally networked event is to send out a feed for anyone around the world to connect to. We set out to do something different, GloNet is not about people sat alone on laptops interacting individually. GloNets offer something new, supporting co-present experience and interaction for remote audiences with technology that goes beyond both one-to-many (Broadcast) and many-to-many (Internet) by supporting remote group participation.
The prototype GloNet in May 2010 has been developed in an incredibly short time span, with development work only commencing in February, and the entire project including international partners delivered in 4 months. It was thanks to the incredible work by Stefan Agamanolis and Michelle Hirschhorn, and the input of our partners in the international cities and the British Council, that this was possible.
Some of the solutions we have devised include Talking Boxes developed by Distance Lab to network the social spaces, the GloNet Front Room telepresence artwork by Paul Sermon, and various event formats such as Quickfire and Head to Head sessions.
In the coming years, we hope to together build on this. FutureEverything is collaborating with the British Council to devise exciting new formats for international events on major global challenges, while a three way partnership between FutureEverything, Distance Lab and Lancaster University aims to explore the potential of telepresence and remote interaction in networked events.
Reducing Air Miles
Our first discovery in our Environment 2.0 project (2006-9) was that air flight emissions account for over 90% of the carbon footprint of the festival. It was clear that changing our model of office printer was not going to help us mitigate the festival’s impact on climate change.
Festivals are judged by how international they are. The more global artists, international visitors, world premieres, the better the festival. It doesnt matter if we dont like it, if we are not international we wont be funded, the press wont write about us, the people wont come.
For a few years I trod the conference circuit, proposing in lectures that one festival needs to first break ranks and “go local”. The outcome is GloNet, a new way of supporting participation in events by remote groups.
People Networks and City Networks
Early on we decided GloNet would need some circulation of people. We hope to achieve a decrease in total air miles, although GloNet is not a “no fly” event in a pure sense. Remote connections are strengthened by face-to-face contact, and so we plan to send a small number of people to the remote venues.
In partnership with the British Council, we are sending project champions out to the different international cities, to be our contact on the ground and participate in the remote venue during the networked event.
Each will run a workshop in advance of GloNet, responding with local participants to the Serendipity City Challenge, a series of questions devised by FutureEverything. The outcomes will then be fed into the formal GloNet programme and be debated during the event.
The intention of the workshops is to create a deeper dialogue that can feed into, and out of, the GloNet event itself, to provide a basis for legacy.
The aim is also that the project champions will seed collaborations in the remote cities relevant to their own practice, which will internationalise their work.
The international cities and remote partners are of central importance to the project. In the prototype GloNet, we have built on FutureEverything’s extensive network of international partners, and the trust and long history of collaboration that already exists. Moving forward, there is an opportunity to build strong ties with new cities and people.
It is these people, and this story, that is the compelling part of GloNet, and we are inviting some of the many people involved, in developing the technology, or in developing the remote satellite events, to contribute to this blog to build up a picture of the development of the GloNet project.
Credit
GloNet is a new model for group-to-group globally networked events, developed by FutureEverything in partnership with British Council, Distance Lab and Lancaster University. Co-produced by FutureEverything with Sendai Creative Cluster Consortium, FesLab and TRUNK in Sendai, Japan; amber in Istanbul, Turkey; Vivo arte.mov and Escola São Paulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil and W2 in Vancouver, Canada for the inaugural FutureEverything Festival 2010 in Manchester, UK. Sponsored by NorthernNet and funded by British Council.
Tags: FutureEverything, GloNet, Networked Event, Remote Collaboration, Teleconference, Telepresence, Unlimited Connectivity