Call for Submissions - Volume 29, Number 3
Issue thematic title: More-than-human, more-than-music
Date of Publication: December 2024
Publishers: Cambridge University Press

Issue co-ordinators:
Dugal McKinnon (dugal.mckinnon@vuw.ac.nz)
Jim Murphy (jim.murphy@vuw.ac.nz)
Sally Jane Norman (sallyjane.norman@vuw.ac.nz)
Mo Zareei (mo.zareei@vuw.ac.nz)

Deadline for submission: 15 January 2024

The term “more-than-human” was used by philosopher David Abram as the subtitle to his influential book The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (1999). The phrase is a call to attend through our senses to what exists beyond what is conventionally, and notably in Western terms, described as human, opening up new modalities of experience. This closely links to the environmentally oriented sonic fields of acoustic ecology and bioacoustics, the creative practices of phonography and soundscape composition, as well as the ecologically tuned sensibilities that have long abounded in many cultures.

The more-than-human also can be taken as anything that is not human, including anthropogenic objects, systems, and phenomena that have become (quasi) autonomous. The more-than-human has typically encouraged engagement with the natural world, yet there is growing recognition of the extent to which the lifeworld has been considerably extended and augmented by tools and techniques. Thus, the more-than-human is here understood as including the technological world, along with its experiential and creative affordances. Machine listening is an example, as are sonification and audification which reach into modalities other than the audible, as well as sound sculpture and non-cochlear sound art.

While the more-than-human has considerably extended sound-based and interdisciplinary practices there remains the question of the extent to which human perception and preference restrains our artistic and interpretative engagement with the more-than-human. In other words, to what degree can the more-than-human lead to more-than-music, moving artistic and critical practices beyond the anthropocentrism of music and perhaps also beyond sonocentrism? As Chris Salter (2015) puts it, “How is it possible that stuff at a distance, at a remove, beyond us, not even human, can exert such powerful effects and affects on our bodies, souls, and world?”

Pierre Schaeffer lamented that musique concrète, birthed through sound, struggled to shuck off the “dramatic” and for this reason never arrived at music. Whether dramatic or musical, this perspective is profoundly humanistic in its obsession with music – a contentious term – and reluctance to fully accept the sonic “thing in itself”. What happens when we accept the sonic agency of ‘vibrant matter’ (Jane Bennett) and investigate the sound object as the force that composes, rather than the material which the composer shapes into a piece? How might such a shift in ontological standpoint change our understanding of electroacoustic music? Or, following the lead of Shintaro Miyazaki, what do the microtemporalities of ‘algorhythmics’, as the voices of machines, reveal about the technological networks in which we are enmeshed and through which our technologically mediated work is undertaken? And if we listen beyond the anthropocentric lifeworld (Eldridge) how readily are we able to discern sonic patternings and relationships that are not legible in familiar ways, and how might our sonomusical sensibilities be shifted as a result? What kind of novel aesthetic is required to engage with, or fabricate, physical soundworlds of chaotically interacting materials (such as in the work of Zimoun) which are the perceptible surface of a complex set of physical properties and relationships? To begin to explore and address questions such as these requires openness to more-than-music, movement beyond the materials and expressive modalities that have traditionally defined what is, or is not, musical, and grappling with the gnarly prospect of post-anthropocentric intention and reception.

Possible topics:

Technologically mediated sound art
Algorithmic composition and autonomous music
Generative and process-based composition
Sound-sculpture, kinetic and object-based sound installations
Artificial Intelligence in music and sound
Live-coding and computer music
Ecosemiotics
Synthetic acoustic ecologies

This call is open to all, and we wish particularly to encourage submissions from often under-represented groups in these fora, and also creatively, collaboratively and interdisciplinary-produced articles. Furthermore, as always, submissions unrelated to the theme but relevant to the journal’s areas of focus are always welcome.

References:

Abram, D. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books.
Bennett, J. 2010. Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Eldridge, A. 2021. N-Eared listening: transdisciplinary ecoacoustics at human-environment interfaces. Ecoacoustics Congress, Journal of Mediterranean Ecology, 19:15.
Miyazaki, S. 2012. Algorhythmics: Understanding Micro-Temporality in Computational Cultures. Computational Culture 2012:9
Miyazaki, S. 2018. Algorhythmics. A Diffractive Approach for Understanding Computation. pp.243-449 In Sayers, J. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities. New York: Routledge.
Salter, C. 2015. Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Zimoun. 2023. https://www.zimoun.net/

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 January 2024

SUBMISSION FORMAT:

Notes for Contributors including how to submit on Scholar One and further details can be obtained from the inside back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/information/instructions-contributors (and download the pdf).

General queries should be sent to: os@dmu.ac.uk, not to the guest editors.

Accepted articles will be published online via FirstView after copy editing prior to the paper version of the journal’s publication.

Editor: Leigh Landy; Associate Editor: James Andean
Founding Editors: Ross Kirk, Tony Myatt and Richard Orton†
Regional Editors: Ricardo Dal Farra, Dugal McKinnon, Jøran Rudi, Margaret Schedel, Barry Truax, David Worrall, Lonce Wyse
International Editorial Board: Marc Battier, Manuella Blackburn, Alessandro Cipriani, Simon Emmerson, Kenneth Fields, Rajmil Fischman, Eduardo Miranda, Rosemary Mountain, Garth Paine, Mary Simoni, Martin Supper, Daniel Teruggi

SUBMISSION FORMAT:

Notes for Contributors and further details can be obtained from the inside back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=OSO&type=ifc (and download the pdf)

Properly formatted email submissions and general queries should be sent to: os@dmu.ac.uk, not to the guest editors.

Hard copy of articles and images and other material (e.g., sound and audio-visual files, etc. – normally max. 15’ sound files or 8’ movie files), both only when requested, should be submitted to:

Prof. Leigh Landy
Organised Sound
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.