The Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024 is interested in critical, speculative approaches at the intersection of art and technology that question, challenge, criticise, deconstruct, recompose, reformulate, shift, dislocate, endanger or reject established standards in sound synthesis and (music) technology. Our aim is to explore aesthetic positions in digital sound synthesis that open up speculative alternatives inaccessible from standard positions. Speculation in this sense could be understood as a situated oscillation between experience and imagination, characteristic of processes that produce new forms of knowledge.
Some of the questions that the symposium adresses include:
- How can the generative potential of computational technologies become aesthetic?
- How can an objectifying perspective be confronted with a process-oriented aesthetic of sound?
- How does the tension of control and emergence play out in artistic practice?
- What are the consequences of regarding sound synthesis as composition and musical compostion as sound synthesis?
The foundation for the symposium is given by the artistic research project Speculative Sound Synthesis, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) within the programme for Arts-based research (PEEK)- PEEK AR 713- G. It is hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). More information on the project can be found here.
The Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024 will be hosted by the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) and the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) and will take place in the MUMUTH building (House of Music and Music Theatre). The venue contains various different spaces (described here) in which all events will take place.
