Call for Web Residencies No. 19 »Algorithmic Poetry.«

The residency »Algorithmic Poetry.« looks at how sound may poetically speak with algorithms and networks. In form and concept, we are attuned to critique, poetic proliferation, mutation, decay, adaptation, and the subversion of algorithms. How, for example, can various sonic ways of knowing infiltrate and mutate platform capitalist predictions and assumptions? With a strong focus on experimentation, we encourage artists whose practice uses sound, in its many platforms, as artistic and critical material to partake in this online residency.

Algorithmic experimentation spans conceptual or technical thinking about digital relations, internet architectures, and subcultures, online sharing or dissemination practices, and technological developments. An experimental approach reconsiders and questions how behavioral data categorization, digital visibility, information pattern recognition, and data collection is implemented for algorithms. With this in mind, what are ways to expand the algorithm, redefine machine relations, and critique data identification with sound?

The open call takes inspiration from poet, literary critic, and philosopher Édouard Glissant, who authored Poetics of Relation, and how this seminal work and his other writings are periodically tweeted via the @Glissantbot¹ in English and French – creating an algorithmic poetics with a coded prompt. In the words of Glissant, »Poetics of relation is about allowing for the surprise of the unexpected connection, the unexpected similarity, the unexpected meeting. It is about recognizing that relationships and connections between things are never fixed but always in a state of flux and transformation.« Poetics of relation describes the process of creating meaningful relationships between seemingly disparate elements, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things. We encourage proposals using sound, listening, and/or recording practices to explore how these different elements interact and how to create significant or consequential relationships between them.

This residency is remote and offers a framework to think about sound projects from varied perspectives and positions rooted in critique, clashes, the imagined, and/or subversion.

In favor of supporting the constantly changing nature of digital online work, and promoting experimental approaches, we do not prescribe the format in which applicants choose to present their work. Yet, the Digital Solitude program provides a web space for each web resident and hosts and distributes their web-based projects within a given frame. In addition, the program works with a web designer/UX designer and programmer who can assist in implementing the project. In addition to presenting and sharing projects online, the program is currently working on offline formats related to the call. This could be a listening session, a panel, an exhibition, or a curated program in fall 2023, to be defined more precisely with the web residents’ working group. We encourage the applicants to consider the accessibility of the users, who may range in age, race, gender, economic class, and ability.

Four project proposals will be selected and rewarded with an online residency and a grant of 1,200 euros.

Call release: late March 2023
Deadline for applications: April 30, 2023 (midnight IDLW/ UTC−12:00)
Announcement of the jury’s decision (via mail): late May 2023
The Web Residency starts on June 1, 2023
Launch Web Residency projects: late July 2023

In 2016, Akademie Schloss Solitude launched Web Residencies to promote young talents from the international digital scene and artists from all disciplines dealing with web-based practices. For each call, Digital Solitude, together with the curator or cooperation partners, selects four project proposals whose creators receive an online residency and a grant.

Artists, collectives, associations, and initiatives of all kinds are invited to experiment with digital technologies and new art forms and reflect on the topics set by the curators or collectives. Web Residencies are carried out online, and the works are presented online.

Artists of all disciplines as well as former Solitude fellows may apply. There is no age limit.

Is it possible to apply to more than one project?
No. We accept only one submission per applicant (individual artist or collectives).

Is it possible to apply with an already existing project?
Yes, if the project is not finished, is process-oriented, and allows for embedding in Digital Solitude’s online environment.

Call Team

Liquid Architecture
Active since 2000, Liquid Architecture is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based organization supporting experimental, interdisciplinary, and critical work addressing sound and listening in context.

Their program stages encounters and creates spaces for sonic experience, and critical reflection on sonority and systems of sonic affect. To do this, they host experiences at the intersection of contemporary art and experimental music, supporting artists to produce performances and concerts, exhibitions, talks, reading groups, workshops, and recordings in art spaces, music venues, and other sites.

Liquid Architecture is curatorially-driven and their methodology embraces research, collaborations, and imaginations. They want to reach beyond local conversations, problems, debates, and questions, to reverberate across media and disciplines, and thus sound out new discourses about the audible world and beyond.

Liquid Architecture acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung as the Traditional Owners and sovereign custodians of the Country on which they practice. They extend their respects to their Elders past and present, and to all First Peoples.

Digital Solitude
Since 2016, the Digital Solitude program of the international Artist-in-Residence Program Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart has focused on the interrelationship of physical and digital space. Digital Solitude promotes the public visualization and communication of the themes of the Solitude network and initiates innovative and alternative approaches in dealing with digital media and technologies. The program promotes the speculative and critical examination of artistic practice and media developments within digital culture. The application and transfer of knowledge about open-source practices, the design of low-threshold access and the enabling of collaborative processes and amplifying of polyphonic voices play a decisive role in this process. Akademie Schloss Solitude maintains lasting relationships with its international network of fellows.

Curatorial involvement: Jazmina Figueroa and Brian Fuata
Graphic design: Anne Lippert and cxxyyl