Call for submissions: ECHO #3 - Feedback

Financial flash crashes, Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, thermostats, the Gulf Stream, Watt’s steam engine, global warming, artificial neural networks. In all of these phenomena feedback is a driving force, creating the possibility for adaption, equilibrium and learning, but also setting the stage for surprising, nonlinear—and in some cases—catastrophic behaviours. As a core component of cybernetics, feedback processes are at play in theory of architecture (Minati and Collen, 2009), management (Beer 1961), robotics (Brooks, 1999), and anthropology (Bateson, 2000) while in the sonic and performative arts, it has propelled seminal works ranging from Onkyo (Nakamura, 2013) and ambient music (Eno, 1975) to sound art (Lucier, 1997).

Call

Feedback is the theme of the third issue of the ECHO journal. We are looking for submissions discussing and critically investigating ideas and artistic use of feedback across a spectrum ranging from the practice-based to the theoretical. Can feedback reshape or diversify our relationship to the world through the rendering of new agencies and materialities along with sonic and performative environments? Or does it represent a techno-solutionist cybernetic dystopia of automated processes that puts us in danger of becoming, in the words of Richard Brautigan, ‘all watched over by machines of loving grace’ (Brautigan, 1967)?

We encourage submissions from practitioners and thinkers from interdisciplinary fields as well as novel contributions stretching the idea of feedback beyond the realm of sound. Contributions may include, but are not limited to:

• The use of feedback across multiple disciplines
• Feedback in complex adaptive performance systems
• Feedback in—and as a model for—creative and performative social processes
• Critical and post-humanist approaches to feedback practices and aesthetics

Submissions may be articles of 6-7000 words or shorter artists statements. Authors are encouraged to structure digitally-native storytelling around their creative work, using media-rich materials, nonlinear navigation and tools of data representation and interactive code. The ECHO software environment is made available to contributors to experiment and to develop their article. See previous issues for examples: echo.orpheusinstituut.be

Publication: December 20^th, 2021

Submission deadline: August 27^th, 2021

Editors: Jonathan Impett and Nicolas Collins

Guest editor: Adam Pultz Melbye

Please upload your submission here: airtable.com/shrATpI3kXWnh0P3x

References

Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. The University of Chicago Press

Beer, S. (1964). Cybernetics And Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Brautigan, R. (1967). All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The Communication Company

Brooks, R. A. (1999). Cambrian Intelligence. The MIT Press

Eno, B. (1975). On Discreet Music. EG

Lucier, A. (1997). Bird And Person Dyning. On Bird And Person Dyning. Cramps Records

Minati, G., & Collen, A. (2009). Architecture as the cybernetic self-design of boundary conditions for emergent properties in human social systems. Cybernetics & human knowing, 16.1-2, 22

Nakamura, T. (2013). No Input Mixing Board #8. Oral Records /The Dim Coast

Adam Pultz Melbye

Double bass/electronics/composition
Born in Ribe, Denmark in 1981. Currently living in Berlin.

Adam is an active a solo artist as well as with numerous international projects

He has written acoustic and electroacoustic music for smaller and larger ensembles as well as theatre, sound installations, dance and film and has created and exhibited sculpture. He has toured over most of Europe, US, Japan and Australia and appears on more than 40 albums.

Current groups are Ens Ekt, Griff and Flamingo and collaborations include Julia Reidy, Viola Yip, Evan Parker, Akemi Nagao, Axel Dörner, Pat Thomas and Jacob Anderskov.

ECHO

ECHO is a new online, open access, peer-reviewed journal that exists to share creative work and understanding in the common space at the intersection of music, thought and technology. An initiative of the MTT (Music, Thought and Technology) research group at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, ECHO welcomes artist-researchers to submit contributions for development on its custom platform.

→ echo.orpheusinstituut.be