OPEN CALL FOR ELECTROACOUTIC WORKS 2023

From Thursday, November 30 to Sunday, December 3, 2023, the SONIC MATTER Festival will take place for the third time in the City of Zurich, Switzerland. During this weekend, the festival never goes to sleep, and the music will never stop playing at the Listening Lounge – worldwide on the SONIC MATTER_radio and during the days and evenings in the heart of the City of Zurich at the Kunstraum Walcheturm. Here, the audience is invited to rest on cushions and cozy blankets to listen to carefully selected electroacoustic works, some freshly composed, by today's most progressive and daring composers and sound artists.

For our 2022 edition, we received 211 entries from 37 countries, from which 46 compositions were selected and performed over two consecutive days. We were thrilled to present the music of such a diverse group of composers from around the world, and this year we again invite composers and sound tinkerers of all ages and origin to submit their electroacoustic works.

Apply here!


Please see the guidelines below. Deadline: April 15, 2023


BACKGROUND

In the spring of 2021, the platform SONIC MATTER was newly created as an invitation to go on a common journey of discovery, exploration and creation in the field of experimental music. This platform includes a festival in Zurich that takes place every December, with an online radio station and engagement initiatives taking place throughout the year. With SONIC MATTER, we would like to offer a space for urgent contemporary issues that can be negotiated jointly by artists and audiences over long periods of time. www.sonicmatter.ch

GUIDELINES

Who can apply?
Established and emerging composers and sound artists are invited to submit one original work from the wide spectrum of contemporary and experimental electroacoustic music and noise work.

Theme
The theme for the 2023 edition of the festival is LEAP – to leap into the future, meeting challenges, embracing the unknown, moving forward with courage and strength, resilience and hope. LEAP focuses on the varying degrees to which contemporary music responds to facing the future.

In this year's curatorial efforts, we draw special inspiration from the current music and sound art practice of artists from and in West Asia.

The Music
The submitted work is original and its composer ensures that all necessary rights have been secured to play the work publicly within the festival's Listening Lounge and on SONIC MATTER_radio. SONIC MATTER is not assuming any responsibility for parts of the submitted work that have not been rightfully licensed. Recordings of instrumental chamber music with/without electronics will not be considered.
Duration: 5-20 minutes. One entry per composer.

Technical Specifications
Format for on location Listening Lounge: AIF / WAV audio file, 16-bit/44.1-kHz or 24-bit/48-kHz, stereo interleaved or four- channel (quadrophony). Format for radio broadcast: mp3, stereo interleaved
Normalization: -0.2dB

Submission Fee
There are no submission fees

Submission
Submit your work by cloud file storage or file sharing service. All submitted audio files need to be stored online. Please, DO NOT send any attachments or links that expire.

The following electronic materials and information are required:

-SONIC MATTER Online Registration Form, https://forms.gle/MZPLdpYjVRcTNjyh6, which includes
- Your name and contact information
- Biography of the artist (German or English, max. 1500 characters, incl. blanks, RTF / DOC / DOCX format, no PDF file)
- Program Notes for the submitted work (German or English, max. 1500 characters, incl. blanks, RTF / DOC / DOCX format, no PDF file)
Downloadable MP3 stereo-mix of the whole work (16-bit, 44.1-kHz)

Example of naming the audio-file submission: sonicmatter23_myname_titlemypiece

Deadline
All material must be received by April 15, 2023

Acceptance
A notification of acceptance will be sent to successful composers via email by May 15, 2023. The selection criteria are based on the quality and originality of the work.
Once selected, winners will be asked to submit high-quality audio files and a photo for communication purposes.All selection decisions are at the discretion of the Open Call jury and the SONIC MATTER team. The jury will be announced at the end of March.

For questions, please write to: admin@sonicmatter.ch