“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

We Love Technology is an annual showcase which celebrates the misuse of technology.
This year we are inviting a range of inspirational makers and thinkers from across digital culture, music and art and design communities. 1pm-6pm on Thursday 20th November

Please note that We Love Technology will be a salon event this year so places are very limited.

WLT08 is programmed by Blink, delivered by BASE and hosted at Bates Mill, Huddersfield HD1 3DX

www.welovetechnology.org

Speakers already confirmed :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dr Chris Speed
Chris Speed is a research active designer working within the field of Digital Architecture, Human Geography and Social Computing developing new forms of spatial practice that transform our experience of the built environment. He is currently a Reader in Digital Architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art and has a background as an artist, freelance multimedia designer and art editor at a large publishing company in London.
<http://x2.i-dat.org/%7Ecs/>

Jen Southern
Jen Southern is an artist whose work involves investigating everyday journeys between virtual and physical spaces, which are navigated through socially embedded technologies such as video games, mobile phones and locative media. Her use of technology is specific to each project and has included robotics, wearables, shipping containers and currently GPS.
www.theportable.tv
www.hamiltonandsouthern.net

Tom Betts
Tom is an art school educated artist, self taught programmer, experimental musician and academic. He has been practising in the field of digital and interactive media for over 10 years and his current work investigates the ways in which digital environments change our perception and treatment of space, time and material. His projects focus on several aspects of this culture such as: schizophrenic and multidimensional reconstructions of data, interventions and distortions of existing digital spaces, generative construction of content and the life of digital objects.
www.thinkinggames.co.uk
www.nullpointer.co.uk

Former contributors include :- Usman Haque / Chris O Shea / Graham Pullin / Daniel Blackburn / Tuomo Tamenpaa / Alex Grunsteidl / Regine DeBatty / Julius Popp / Steve Manthorp / Jaxson Payne / Player Please / Mirjam Struppek / Tom Schouten / Mathias Fuchs / Troika / Tom Betts / Andy Gracie / slub / Tim Hunkin / Alison Mealey / Matt Locke / Stuart Nolan / Matt Webb / Iman Moradi / Andrew Wilson

All enquiries to Lisa Roberts : lisa (at) blinkmedia.org

Five Trees Forest is a pervasive game played with Nokia NFC enabled mobile phones.

The Five Trees Forest is an invisible world that is in exactly the same place as our world.

It has landmarks, like the Down the Back of the Settee Mines

characters like the Wise Sheep

and baddies, wicked witches like the Big Flip Flops witch.

The only creatures that can jump between our world and the Five Trees Forest are sprites, and when they are in our world, sprites like to live in mobile phones because the batteries keep them warm, and the radio waves make them giggle.

To pick up and drop off sprites from the Forest, humans just need to hold their phone up to the secret signs that mark places in the Five Trees Forest landscape, and their sprite will hop into or out of the phone.

Sprites talk to humans by sending messages that appear out of thin air (humans sometimes call them text messages), and ask magic questions like “If you were a ghost, who would you haunt and why?” in order to win treasure, and fight the wicked witches.

The answers to the magic questions from all the players appear on the map of the Forest, so that humans become part of the story and history of the Five Trees Forest wherever it appears.

The Five Trees Forest will be found first in a trial at the Media Centre in Huddersfield, then at Norton Sixth Form College in Sheffield as part of the Off the Shelf literature festival

Lisa Roberts, the director of Blink and programmer of We Love Technology took on the role of Social Technologies Summit Manager for Manchester’s music and arts festival Futuresonic this month.

She is proud to being part of one of the best annual events in the North.

Futuresonic 2009 and the Social Technologies Summit will take place 13-16 May 2009. Futuresonic is an international festival of Art, Music and Ideas now in its 13th year occupying the orbits of both digital culture and music. Browse below to explore Futuresonic 2008 - 5 days and nights of live music, art premieres, exhibitions, club nights and events featuring a world-class programme of over 350 artists attended by 50,000 people in 30 venues and spaces across the city centre.