Current call

ECHO #7 - Speculative Sound Synthesis

The online journal ECHO invites submissions for its upcoming seventh issue on "Speculative Sound Synthesis," edited by David Pirrò, and Leonie Strecker. ECHO is the online publication of the Music, Thought and Technology research group at Orpheus Instituut, Ghent.

The artistic practice of sound synthesis has evolved in close relation to science and technology. This relationship has been fundamental, offering new means and methods for experimentation while simultaneously instilling a strong pull toward standardisation, closure, and control.

"Speculative Sound Synthesis" destabilises and recomposes the multilayered relationship between technology and artistic practice, seeking to unleash aesthetic potentials that would remain unseen or hidden by technological habits. Speculation, in this context, denotes a questioning attitude that emphasises hypothetical thinking, curiosity, and exploration. As an artistic practice, speculation functions as a situated oscillation between experience and imagination, generating new forms of knowledge and opening pathways to novel aesthetic thinking.

This special issue welcomes contributions from practitioners who are committed to critical and speculative approaches at the intersection of art and technology. Within this hybrid space, synthesis is understood both as a means of producing new forms and, in a more abstract sense, the practice of bringing forth assemblages of materials and concepts. We seek contributors engaged in practices that question, challenge, criticise, deconstruct, recompose, reformulate, shift, dislocate, endanger, or reject established standards of sound synthesis, exploring aesthetic positions that offer alternative perspectives on thinking and creating sound.

This issue is edited by the Speculative Sound Synthesis research project team. The "Speculative Sound Synthesis" project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) within the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK) – PEEK AR 713-G and is hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. 
https://speculative.iem.at/