How to live together in sound? Towards sonic democracy
An artistic research project hosted by Uniarts Helsinki and funded by the Kone Foundation
Symposium
Monday 12. October to Wednesday 14. October 2026
Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box Concert Hall
Call for Contributions
We all communicate through sound and contribute in different ways to constituting and sustaining more-than-human communities in the aural domain. We condition and shape our common life-worlds through the performance of our aural and sonic actions: hearing and listening, as well as producing, processing, and distributing sounds. We outline different forms of otherness and commonalities by mobilizing sonic agencies in encounters that unfold, at least partially, in the aural medium.
As artistic research practitioners we provide new evidence of all these complex and intertwined processes by expanding and enhancing our sonic attention and awareness. We thereby disclose new possibilities of understanding different shapes and ways of individual and collective aural being-in-the-world.
Anchored by the generic question “how to live together in sound?” and complemented with the expression of a social, societal, and political orientation “towards sonic democracy,” this symposium offers a framework for in-depth exchanges about practices and method developments, insights and concepts, experiences and expressions that co-constitute our common sonic and aural lives.
On this basis, we are interested in addressing the following themes:
- • Sonic/aural public space and shared spaces: navigating differences and commonalties.
- • Togetherness: othernesses in coexistence.
- • Aural/sonic research practices and methods: conceptual frameworks, media, contexts, and impacts.
- • More-than-human collaborative processes in artistic research.
- • The politics of the sonic/aural: sonic commons, sonic democracy, aural sustainability.
- • Ethics of listening, recording, reproduction, analysing, interpreting, translating, and sense-making.
- • Alternatives to authoritarianism, colonialism, and extractivism through sonic/aural practices.
- • Laws and norms pertaining to sonic/aural co-existence.
In this framework, we are specifically interested in the following questions:
- • What and how could a ‘sonic democracy’ be?
- • What are shared sonic spaces in a democratic sense?
- • Who has the right to decide about the production, organisation, and distribution of sound?
- • What types of togetherness can be developed in and through sound and aural/aurally informed practices?
- • How do we (re-)think sonic and aural relationships, with human and non-human others?
- • How does an environment sound that is ecologically sustainable and socially integrative, fair, and peaceful?
- • What ethical rights do other species have in relation to the natural and built spaces?
- • How to produce sonic art in an environment dominated by sound networks of other species?
- • How is sound interpreted in other artforms such as literature, visual, blended visual and sonic practices?
- • What is sound when you cannot hear it, and what are unheard, unsounded tensions?
- • When, how, and where are shared sonic living spaces created?
- • How do we interact within the invisible domain of the sonic?
- • How can we think our collective life in and through sound?
- • What are the particular agencies of the aural medium in constituting and for researching ways of being together? And furthermore, what are the social and societal transformative agencies of the aural?
We welcome contributions addressing these and other issues related to sonic and more-than-human co-existence from an artistic research perspective.
Submission Formats
We are looking for submissions in one of the following formats:
- • Short Lecture: duration 20 min. (suggested 15 min. + 5 min. Q&A)
- • Long Presentation: lecture, lecture-recital, performance and talk, etc., duration 45 min. (suggested 35 min. + 10 min. Q&A)
- • Audio Works: exploratory pieces, addressing the symposium topics. These works will be accessible online during the symposium, please take this into consideration with regard to the work’s duration.
Please submit an abstract (max. 350 words), a short CV (max. 250 words), and if needed, special requirements for the presentation. Audio works should be sent as download link to an audio file, preferably in PCM format in high quality, not embedded on a commercial streaming platform.
Submission deadline is 10. April 2026, selection results will be announced by 15. May 2026.
Submission Form:
This symposium is conceived and organized by the team of the artistic research project “How to Live Together in Sound? Towards Sonic Democracy”
Alex Arteaga, Jaana Erkkilä-Hill, Jan Schacher, and Petri Kuljuntausta, with the support of the Sibelius Academy production team and Uniarts research services.
The project is funded by the Kone Foundation
and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki.
For any inquiries, please contact: equally.stunning915@passmail.com
The programme will be published on the project website by 1. June 2026
Download the call as a PDF here
