Audio Mostly is an interdisciplinary conference on the design and experience of interaction with sound that prides itself on embracing applied theory and reflective practice. Our annual gatherings bring together thinkers and doers from academia and industry who share an interest in sonic interaction and the use of audio for interface design. This remit covers product design, auditory display, computer games and virtual environments, new musical instruments, and education and workplace tools. It further includes fields such as the psychology of sound and music, cultural studies, system engineering, and everything in between in which sonic interaction plays a role.
The 20th Audio Mostly 2025 Conference will be co-located with the 30th ICAD 2025 at Coimbra, Portugal, from June 30 to July 4 (please see https://amicad2025.dei.uc.pt)
The theme of the conjoined conference is “Let’s Play Together”, intending to invite scholars, researchers, artists and practitioners for an interdisciplinary gathering to collaboratively explore sound and its social dimensions. The concept of playing encompasses playing as social bonding, playing as the act of exploring the musical space of instruments for personal and shared expressions, playing as an interactive and collective approach, playing as an explorative attitude towards studying sound art and aesthetics, and yet playing as a shared activity to foster creativity. By focusing on the act of playing and collaborating, the conference aims to deepen our understanding of how sound can transcend boundaries and bring people together across diverse social, historical, and technological contexts.
AM 2025 will provide a platform for attendees to present and discuss cutting-edge research, innovative artistic practices, and critical perspectives on sound within human experiences. The concept of collective play embodies a wide range of acoustic phenomena, including music, sound art and sound technologies. We welcome topics that focus on the importance of sound within play, either in performative arts, embodied experiences, network-based technologies, soundscape compositions, game and media studies, perception explorations, or social and collaborative computing.
The conference theme seeks to create a space for researchers to exchange experiences in a creative environment, featuring keynote presentations, panel discussions, paper presentations, artistic performances, workshops and interactive demos. To stimulate new directions for sound research through cross-disciplinary collaborations, let’s all “play together”!
Submission deadline: March 7, 2025 (AoE)
Where to Submit: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=amicad2025
See important dates for more deadlines
Contributions
The Audio Mostly conference series is interested in Sonic Interaction Design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in general. The conference provides a space to reflect on the role of sound and music in our lives and how to understand, develop and design systems which relate to sound and music. We are particularly interested in this from a broad HCI perspective. We encourage the submission of original papers, posters, demos, workshops, music contributions and installations addressing the conference theme or other topics from the list provided below. We welcome multidisciplinary approaches involving a diversity of fields, including but not limited to the following topics:
- Sound Design Approaches (theories, models, methods and taxonomies)
- Sonic Cultural Studies (ethnography, musicology)
- Philosophical Perspectives on Interaction, Sound and Design (ontological, aesthetic, sociological, critical and epistemological issues)
- User Experience Studies, Models and Methods
- Participatory and Co-Design Methodologies
- Speculative and Critical Designs and Prototypes
- Arts-based Research
- Music, Performing and Sonic Arts
- Psychoacoustics, Perception and Cognition Studies
- Auditory Process Monitoring and Real-world Applications
- Accessibility, Inclusive Design and Assistive Technologies with Sound
- Sonic Interaction Design (e.g. embodied and multimodal interaction, musical expression, ambient)
- Sound and Music in Games and Interactive Media
- Immersive and Spatial Audio
- Computational Modeling and AI Approaches for Sound (e.g. MIR, Affective Computing, Co-Creative Systems, Semantic Web)
- Embedded and Sensing Devices and Platforms
- Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
- Sound and Music Production & Engineering (e.g. binaural audio, music libraries, interfaces, synthesis models)
- Multimodal Interfaces and Interactions (e.g. data analysis, storytelling)
- Acoustic Ecology and Soundscape Studies
We expect submissions covering these topics from a variety of viewpoints: from design (HCI, sonic interaction design, sonification and multisensory interactions, extended reality) to engineering (signal processing, spatial audio, networking, artificial intelligence) to music and fine arts (composition, artistic research). The Audio Mostly 2025 theme proposes to explore perspectives of play within sonic research.
Submitted papers should provide a scientific contribution by reporting novel research methods and results (original research paper), summarizing the current state-of-the-art on a topic (review paper), presenting an opinion about specific issues (position paper), or presenting practical situations in real-world contexts that can contribute to existing knowledge of the field (case-study paper).
Length and Formatting
Authors can choose the most appropriate length for their contribution amongst two formats:
- Short papers (max 4000 words, typically poster or demo presentation) should report novel work in progress or research that is best communicated in an interactive format;
- Long papers (max 10000 words, typically oral in-person or remote presentation) should present a substantial contribution to the research field.
The word limit includes all tables, acknowledgements, and appendices. References are not counted.
The length of the abstract should be 150-200 words.
Peer review
All submissions will be fully peer-reviewed. The review process is double-blind with each submission receiving three reviews. Please submit completely anonymized drafts. Please do not include any identifying information, and refrain from citing authors’ prior work in anything other than the third person.
Template
All papers must be created according to ACM templates available for both Word and LaTex: https://authors.acm.org/proceedings/production-information
We highlight that, in previous AM editions, the submission was made in a two-column format; but the new ACM authoring system advises using the single-column format.
Supplementary materials
We encourage authors to attach additional supplementary materials such as audio/video examples, data sets, or measurements. For review, you can include anonymized links to cloud services or similar. For the camera-ready version, any such temporary links must be replaced by persistent links with handle/DOI or similar. Alternatively, you can upload supplementary material with your submission. Audio/video materials should be anonymized for review (i.e. should not contain faces or voices of the authors), but can be changed for publication.
Attendance
Please note that for the paper to be presented and included in the proceedings, at least one of the paper authors must register and attend the conference (see registration information for more details).
Presentation format
Upon paper submission, authors will have the possibility to give their preferences for oral, poster, or demo presentations. The final presentation mode will be based on the review process and program constraints and will be communicated to the authors upon acceptance.
You can submit a paper with an accompanying demo that is presented in addition to a talk or poster. In this case, you must also submit the required supplementary data as described in the call for demos.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Program chairs if you have any questions, at info.amicad2025@dei.uc.pt
Program Chairs AM
Mariana Seiça
University of Coimbra, Portugal
Jordan Wirfs-Brock
Whitman College, Washington, United States