The RND 2025 open call seeks innovative and critical submissions from all areas of study addressing one of several themes reflected within CTM 2025, as described below. Nine selected candidates will give short ten minute presentations within different modules, linked by discussion rounds at the end of each module.

RND offers an international platform to exchange with various colleagues and researchers working on related ideas. The initiative also provides a chance to share your research via audio/video after the festival via CTM’s Youtube and Soundcloud channels.

This RND edition will take place in collaboration with the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Berlin-based network and project space Trust. Entrance to the event is free.

Theme: Affection

Offering a counterpoint to the world’s current state of conflict, this theme engages with and reflects upon the various potentials of the word »affection,« exploring new modes of relationality that are at once intimate and social, dismantling conventional divisions of public and private, and embracing ideas of interdependence and the richness of multi-perspective experience. Affection is the theme of this year’s CTM Radio Lab commission, and a longer theme description is available in the context of that project.

Theme: Resynthesising the Traditional

Drawing on resynthesis, a technique from computer music where sounds are broken down into fundamental elements, this theme examines how artists and researchers might explore cultural heritage while avoiding the traps of (self-)exoticism or the unequal dynamics often shaped by stereotypes and mainstream cultural narratives—to view culture not as something static or untouchable but as fluid and open to reinterpretation and change. Resynthesising the Traditional is the theme driving a namesake artistic lab at CTM 2025—a longer theme description is available in the context of that initiative.

Theme: Anarchy in the AI

With this theme, speakers are invited to present on imaginaries and potentials of alternative AI futures in sound, marked by wildness and anarchic, unpredictable qualities, rather than tame standardised »middle grounds.« By embracing a feral quality in AI, can we challenge dominant narratives and open up possibilities for transformative technological developments that are more inclusive, creative, and attuned to the diverse complexities of human and non-human worlds? Conversely, how feral is too feral—what ethical constraints should be considered? Speakers and researchers could, for example, point towards new innovations, aesthetics, discourses, and tools supporting ways to materialise these sonic futures.

Key Dates

Application deadline: 29 October 2024 at 23:59 local Berlin time
RND programme announced: mid November 2024
RND 2025 event: Saturday 1 February 2025
CTM 2024 Sustain: 24 January – 2 February 2025

Conditions and How to Apply

Presentations should take place on-site (not by video lecture) within the festival’s Discourse programme, in English. Group projects should be represented by one applicant/speaker at the event.

As in previous years, we unfortunately cannot grant any funding for travel and accommodation. Participants will receive a CTM 2025 festival pass, a catered lunch on the day of the presentations, and a group dinner.

CTM 2025 RND Application Form