SMC x MBZ: INTERPLAY
In November 2026, SMC comes to Zagreb, bringing the Sound and Music Computing Conference into dialogue with Music Biennale Zagreb (MBZ). This collaboration highlights a shared history of fostering innovation and exchange: in its first thirty years, from 1961 to 1991, MBZ exemplified an “interplay” between Eastern and Western European cultural and political discourses. Inspired by this legacy, INTERPLAY serves as the central theme of SMC26, emphasizing dynamic relationships between humans, machines, and sonic environments, and the reciprocal influences that emerge through technological mediation.
INTERPLAY can be explored in multiple ways. It encompasses real-time co-creation between performers and intelligent systems, both in person and remotely, revealing new modes of shared agency. It includes interactive sonic ecosystems where sensors, embodied interfaces, and adaptive algorithms continuously transform auditory feedback loops. Cognitive and perceptual dimensions of co-adaptation are also central, investigating how users develop intuitive strategies within complex sonic systems.
INTERPLAY can be explored in multiple ways. It encompasses real-time co-creation between performers and intelligent systems, both in person and remotely, revealing new modes of shared agency. It includes interactive sonic ecosystems where sensors, embodied interfaces, and adaptive algorithms continuously transform auditory feedback loops. Cognitive and perceptual dimensions of co-adaptation are also central, investigating how users develop intuitive strategies within complex sonic systems.
Supporting these explorations are new methods and tools that enable multimodal communication between human input, machine analysis, and sound synthesis. Expressive interfaces, high-resolution sensing, modeling, prediction, gesture-to-sound mapping, and adaptive response, realized through classical signal analysis, machine learning, and deep neural networks, advance gesture recognition, intention prediction, and context-dependent audio generation. In this expanded sense, INTERPLAY highlights the evolving entanglement of musical creativity and computational intelligence, opening possibilities for richer, more fluid human-machine interactions and celebrating the collaborative spirit of SMC and MBZ.