Drew Hemment discusses how some of the newly announced projects for May's Futuresonic in Manchester could feed back into how take stock our neighbourhoods in the future.

Details have been released of two events in next weeks Futuresonic festival which shed light on the festival's Environment 2.0 theme. Alongside a line up that includes Ackroyd and Harvey, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Elin Wikström, Amy Balkin, Scenocosme, James Marriott, Usman Haque and HeHe, announced here, Futuresonic will also be working with scientists from the Natural History Musem and the Met Office on two unique "citizen science" pieces of research to examine ways of recording an urban microclimate. One will use "micro-tagging" to record animal and plant life in Manchester's Philips Park, the other will map the path of bubbles blown around the city. Both are science-based artworks that require public participation for them to work. Both draw together the idea that the urban enviroment is changing under environmental pressure.

For artistic director Drew Hemment, both pieces are typical of Futuresonic's approach, which revolves around the three-way interaction between technology, environmentalism and society. "For the last eight years I've been really involved in areas of art practice that involve an engagment with the environment through technology," Hemment told RSA Arts & Ecology.

"A lot of our work is around social media as well. It's all concerned with this network space, and how that changes the way we engage with the environment. That interest collided with a personal interest in environmentalism and climate change."

See Futuresonic: Environment 2.0.

Forever Bubbles

Futuresonic is asking Manchester people to join together in a unique experiment which has been developed in association with the Met Office to map air flows in Manchester, examining the "urban heat island" phenomenon. It involves little more than people blowing bubbles and seeing where they land, then recording what they find online.

"The ideas for the bubble blowing came partly from the Met Office," says Drew Hemment. Climate Bubbles will see hundreds of people across Manchester simultaneously blowing soap bubbles and noting where and how quickly they float. People will then be asked to input their individual bubble data into an on-line interactive map of the city, giving the Met Office access to a wealth of urban climate data that is difficult to observe via conventional methods.

For Hemment, the cross-disciplinary nature of the artwork is what excites him about it. "People ask me, 'How is that an artwork?' For me that's exactly the kind of practice that I like...I asked [Carlo Buontempo, the Met Office scientist] at an early stage where he would be willing to be cited as an artist and he agreed. It's this kind of slippage that I really like."

Climate Bubbles aims to get the people of Manchester involved in a creative and engaging exercise which will also provide the Met Office with vital data. It has been devised to be fun and inclusive - giving participants of all ages a great sense of civic pride, community and discovery, and providing children with a great introduction to science outside of the classroom.

Futuresonic artistic director Drew Hemment said: "There is a public appetite for mass participation activities such as Springwatch and the bluebell survey but these tend to be fairly traditional in approach. And while they are very good at engaging with structured organisations like schools and specialist societies, they are arguably less good at engaging wider audiences."

Mike McCarthy, Urban Heat specialist from the Met Office said: “Understanding how a city affects not only temperature but other aspects of the local weather, such as wind, is very important as these elements have a direct impact on our wellbeing and comfort." 

Taking part could not be simpler. All you need is a container of bubble solution (simply water, washing up liquid and, optionally, glycerine solution) and a paper bubble-cone.

There are two games you can play:

The Bubble Chase | Choose somewhere that’s safe and easy to pinpoint on an on-line map with lots of space to run around (maybe your local park) and blow a single bubble. Chase the bubble until it pops, lands or floats somewhere you can’t follow. Blow another bubble from the finishing point. After 5-10 bubbles note the final place you end up so you can record it online.

The Bubble Race | Choose a start location and set a finish line 10 metres (10 large adult steps) from your start location in the direction of the wind. Use a stopwatch (or mobile phone) to time how long it takes for a single bubble to reach the finish line. Write down the time and then upload it online.

By logging on to www.futuresonic.com/bubbles you can register your results and upload them onto the Climate Bubbles map of Manchester. As they day continues, and more data is uploaded, it will create a clearer picture of the city's local urban climate.

Hemment hopes this can become a pilot for a national project in 2011. "There are four criteria we have to test this as an experiemnt," he says. "One, can we simply get a lot of people outdoors doing this kind of experiement? Two, can we get any public engagement and understanding of some of the science. Three, from a science perspective do we get any meaningful data emerging from all the noise with these experiments? And finally, is that data scientifically valuable?"

Philips Park

In a second artwork, environmental artist Christian Nold has joined forces with ecologists from the Natural History Museum in London and local people from East Manchester to record the plant and animal life in the park.

The process, known as "bio-tagging", involves walking in a straight line between different predetermined points and recording details of all the plant, animal and insect life found along the way in minute detail.

Using a "Manchester Rover" ("which is a bit like a Mars Rover... I'm not sure if its going to be a shopping trolley or not," says Hemment), people will record wildlife alongside differnces in climate and weather. The plan is to then combine all the different strands of data and "map" the bio-diversity of the park at highly detailed level.

"We're working with all sorts of groups from East Manchester, which can be a deprived area," says Hemment. "We're working with an allotments group, a group of asylum seekers and a group of younb people." Each is given the freedom to record what data they find important, and to chose the method by which they record it. "It's a folksonomy, rather than a taxonomy, which is very Environoment 2.0," says Hemment.

Hemment believes that these citizen-centred methods of data capture are of great potential interest. "The Natural History Museum's wider view is that we can find ways of recording biodiversity in ways that take note of what the local understanding of biodiversity is."

One reason why the Natural History Museum’s scientists and Futuresonic have specifically chosen Philps Park is due to a highly unusual micro-climate that they suspect exists in the vicinity. Thermal imaging seems to indicate that there is a permanent cool air stream that flows through the park which could be causing significant temperature variations. Even areas just a few hundred metres from each other could experience significant differences in temperature, which in turn could have a major impact on wildlife and plants.

Futuresonic’s Pete Abel says: “If you look at a thermal image of Greater Manchester you can make out what appears to be a patch of cooler air that sits over the Philips Park area. When this type of temperature variation occurs it is almost unique to modern cities, but scientists are still trying to calculate the ecological impact this phenomena has on bio-diversity. To do this requires the manual collection of very detailed data which is why we want local people to help us capture every insect, daisy and leaf within specific zones around the park.

“However, this isn’t just a boring science exercise which involves just taking a lot of notes. Christian and other Futuresonic staff will be encouraging everyone taking part to record their own specific data in a fun and creative way and to actively contribute to the special film being made to be shown at the international Futuresonic art exhibition in a few weeks time.”

Find more out at the Futuresonic website: www.futuresonic.com