Open Call

Call for Contributions: High Pitch Magazine Explores Environmental Sound

About the Issue

High Pitch Magazine’s second digital issue — guest edited by Samuel Hertz—turns to environmental sound as a space where sonic ecologies intersect with power, technology, and cultural inscription.

This issue brings together contributions that engage critically with the lineages of sonic and acoustic ecologies while examining their resonances within contemporary art practices. We are interested in work that explores how environmental sound can be used as a tool to question systems of power, technology, ideas of ‘nature,’ and (sonic) subjectivities.

Theme Context

Environmental sound—across scientific and artistic practices—has become a potent metaphor for, and material engagement with, the destruction of livelihoods wrought by climate change. Yet climate change cannot be understood in isolation. It emerges from the enduring legacies of Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism, systems that have historically treated bodies and ecosystems as extractable resources.

In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers and artists within the field of Acoustic Ecology developed languages to consider the relationship between sound, landscape, and ecology. They challenged us to consider the impact of sound pollution and the composition of our sonic environments, encouraging the development of more nuanced spatial and acoustic subjectivities that reflect cultural, societal and infrastructural norms. Yet sonic ecology/acoustic ecology can just as easily be a playground through which an unquestioned human dominance resonates, and through which dominant power flows. In the lineage of acoustic ecology and associated understandings of environmental sound, we also encounter critical issues such as monolithic truths enforced by technoscientific listening, nature/culture bifurcations, and a reliance upon human dominance in the clothing of stewardship.

Building on these reflections, this issue asks: What are the important lessons we can take from thinking through ‘environmental sound’ and the languages they extended to the sonic arts and sound studies? How can critical approaches to environmental sound generate pathways of resistance that complicate conventional ecological associations of sound, instead framing them as modes of thinking through material power relations?

Possible Topics include

• Tensions between environmental sound as ‘ambiance’ and utopian versions of sonic natures
• Technoscientific acoustic sensing practices and the datafication of sound
• Environmental listening practices in text scores
• Re-evaluations of the history of sound practices and the environmental movement
• Sonic resistance
• Sound in environmental activism
• Sonic stewardship and noise ordinances
• Colonial naturalism, sound, and archives
• Sounds of loss/loss of sounds

Who Can Pitch

We welcome pitches from artists, researchers, writers, curators, and others working across sound, ecology, and critical theory.

Pitch Guidelines

Please keep your pitch to 250 words or fewer, and include:

• A clear description of your proposed contribution and its relation to the theme Environmental Sound
• The format of your contribution (short essay, interview, exhibition or performance review, sonic work)
• If responding to an exhibition or event, include relevant URLs (without relying on them to explain your concept)
• A few sentences about yourself with links to previous work, if available
• Any questions you may have

Submission Information

Length: 800–2,000 words

Fee: €150 per selected contribution

Submissions must be previously unpublished and not submitted elsewhere.

Timeline

• Pitch Deadline: August 10, 2025
• Final Submission Deadline: September/October 2025
• Digital Publication: December 2025

Submit pitches and questions to:

info@highpitchmagazine.com