The Sonic Practices Conference 2026

The Sonic Practices Conference is a three-day conference on Live Electronics at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH) celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the KMH Live Electronics Ensemble. The conference will feature paper presentations, lecture performances, and live concerts.

The conference is arranged by the Sonic Practices Working Group, a collaboration between the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Royal College of Music, and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. The working group is led by Ludvig Elblaus, Mattias Petersson and Ida Lundén.

Attending the conference is free of charge, but registration is required. Public registration will be made available after the reviewing process has finished and the number of presenting participants has been verified.

Schedule Outline

Thursday December 3rd:
09-10 Registration
10-17 Conference Program
20-22 Concert

Friday December 4th:
10-17 Conference Program
20-22 Concert

Saturday December 5th:
10-16 Conference Program

Venue

The conference is held at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, located on Valhallavägen 105, right next to the subway station Stadion.

Website of the Royal College of Music

Google Maps Link

Keynote Speakers

Vinyl-terror & -horror

The artist duo Vinyl-terror & -horror, consisting of Camilla Sørensen (b. 1978) and Greta Christensen (b. 1977), works at the intersection of sound and visual art. The duo is known for their captivating turntable concerts and immersive, humorous, post-apocalyptic sound installations Characteristic of their turntable performances and compositional work in general, the duo approaches the vinyl medium from a sculptural perspective, using the the turntable itself and the vinyl-material as compositional agents that lead to unexpected outcomes. Vinyl-terror & -horror use manipulated records, including broken, baked, collaged 'cut-ups' on multi-pickup turntables - blending a wide range of culturally diverse musical genres in a non-hierarchical mix, such as classical, opera, folk, schlager, spoken word, hammond organ interpretations as well as horror flm sound effects, pan fute bird imitations etc. into an abstract cinematic sound narrative.

Jeff Snyder

Jeff Snyder (b. 1978) is a composer, improviser, and instrument designer living in Princeton, New Jersey, and active in the New York City area.

As founder and lead designer of Snyderphonics, Jeff designs and builds unusual electronic musical instruments. His creations include the Manta, which is played by over 150 musicians around the world; the JD-1 Keyboard/Sequencer, and the Electrosteel, a synthesizer that is inspired by the pedal steel guitar.

Jeff is a member of experimental electronic duo exclusiveOr, avant jazz group The Federico Ughi Quartet, improvisatory noise trio The Mizries, and laptop ensemble Sideband. He fronts the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves as his electro-country alter-ego, Owen Lake. He also composes alternate-reality Early Music for an ensemble of his invented instruments.

In 2009, Jeff co-founded an experimental music record label, Carrier Records , which continues to release strange and exciting experimental music. In 2011, he received a doctorate with distinction in Music Composition from Columbia University. He is the Director of Electronic Music at Princeton University, and the Director of PLOrk , the Princeton Laptop Orchestra.

Invited Session with Atau Tanaka

The conference will feature a special invited session where Atau Tanaka will speak about his upcoming book Body Music - Phenomenologies of Sonic Gesture .

Call for Contributions

The Sonic Practices Working Group invites you to a three-day, single track conference on Live Electronics at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH) in celebration of the 20 year anniversary of the KMH Live Electronics Ensemble. The conference will feature paper presentations, lecture performances, and live concerts.

The conference is arranged by the Sonic Practices Working Group, a collaboration between the Royal College of Music (KMH), the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack), in Stockholm. The group, founded in 2025 at the KTH NAVET Center for Art, Technology, and Design, aims to discuss and meet around methods, tools, and technology for the sonic material used within music, fine arts, and research.

Preference will be given to submissions that deal with how Live electronic musicians play together and this is true also for music submissions: Live performances are preferred over fixed media pieces, and submissions with more than one performer are encouraged.

Lecture and concert performances will be held in Lilla Salen at KMH, fitted with a 29.4 hemispheric loudspeaker setup. Non-standard loudspeaker setups are possible and will be assessed on a per-proposal basis.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Performance strategies in electronic music ensembles

• Digital, analog, and electroacoustic lutherie for live performance

• Speculative, critical, and non-standard instrument design

• Notation and interpretation practices for electronic music ensembles

• Shared instrumentality

• Source separation and spatialization in live electronic performance

•  Human and non-human ensemble interplay

• Co-creative composition, distributed agency and improvisation

Submissions

All submissions will be reviewed in a single-blind peer review process and do not need to be anonymized. All accepted submissions that are presented at the conference will be collected and published in a digital conference proceedings.

Submission categories are:

• Short Paper Presentation - Short Paper (2-4 pages), 10 minute presentation.

• Paper Presentation - Paper (4-6 pages), 15 minute presentation.

• Lecture Performance - Short Paper (2-4 pages), 20 minute presentation including 5-10 minutes of live performance.

• Performance - A 5-15 minutes live performance, preferably in ensemble form.

Submit to EasyChair at easychair.org/my/conference?conf=spc26  

Deadlines

Submission deadline: 1st of September
Result notification: 1st of October

Paper Template

A LaTeX Paper template is available here: Template (zip 128 kB) . 

Registration

Attending and presenting at the conference is free of charge, but registration is required.

Contact

Ludvig Elblaus - elblaus@kth.se