NOVA Contemporary Music Meeting 2027 – Displaced Sounds: Music and Algorithms

Displaced Sounds: Music and Algorithms
Contemporary music is increasingly shaped by digital circulation and algorithmic mediation. Streaming platforms, recommendation systems, AI-assisted and machine-learning tools, and data-driven listening practices are transforming how music is created, distributed, archived, analysed, and experienced. These developments challenge established frameworks of authorship and rights distribution, while driving new technological infrastructures for music and the cultural and creative industries.
The theme Displaced Sounds addresses multiple forms of displacement: sounds detached from their original contexts; musical works reconfigured through digital circulation; listening practices shaped by opaque recommendation systems; archives reorganised through metadata and computational classification; cultural materials transformed by algorithmic mediation; and creative processes negotiated between human agency and automated systems.
Algorithms can amplify visibility while obscuring alternative voices. They may democratise access to music while reinforcing economic concentration, aesthetic standardisation, and platform dependency. Although they can support creativity and experimentation, they also raise questions concerning authorship, labour, agency, bias, ownership, copyright and neighbouring rights, and control. Artificial intelligence and generative systems further challenge conventional distinctions among composer, performer, listener, archive, and machine.
This conference welcomes critical, historical, philosophical, artistic, technological and empirical approaches to the relationships among music, sound, digital circulation, and algorithmic systems. It particularly welcomes contributions exploring how artificial intelligence, digital platforms, computational infrastructures, and automated processes affect musical creation, performance, circulation, pedagogy, preservation and listening practices.
Main topics:
1. Algorithmic Creation, AI, and Artistic Practice
• Algorithmic and AI-assisted composition
• Human–machine association in artistic practice
• Algorithmic listening and machine perception
• Critical and philosophical perspectives on musical automation
• Resistant, alternative, and experimental technological practices
2. Platforms, Streaming, and Digital Music Infrastructures
• Digital circulation and platform cultures
• Streaming systems and recommendation algorithms
• Platform governance, interoperability, and music infrastructures
• Technological innovation for music and the cultural and creative industries
3. Archives, Data, Preservation, and Computational Classification
• Sound archives, metadata, and computational classification
• Digital preservation and cultural protection
• Sampling, remix, reuse, and recontextualization
4. Rights, Ethics, Labour, and Governance in Digital Music Environments
• Authorship, copyright, neighbouring rights, and ownership in algorithmic environments
• Copyright and rights management in digital environments
• Bias, ethics, and cultural diversity in computational systems
• Automation and musical labour
We welcome submissions from researchers, musicologists, composers, performers, scholars, philosophers, artists, technologists, and other researchers engaged with contemporary music and sound practices.
Students, postdoctoral researchers and early-career academics are particularly encouraged to submit proposals