The Sound of Future is an open call for sound art from The New Museum of Networked Art, and if you work with sound it is worth the hour it takes to enter. It is free, it has no age limit, and it accepts work made any time from 2020 to 2026.
It also tells you two different things about when it closes, which is the first thing to deal with.
The deadline problem
The listing’s header reads:
Call for entries extended deadline : 1 November 2026
The regulations section of the same post, further down, reads:
Artists working with sound are invited to transform their ideas … into exciting sound compositions, and submit them before the deadline, 1 October 2026.
Regulations – deadline: 1 October 2026
So the headline was updated to extend the call and the body was not — twice. The most likely reading is that 1 November is correct and the regulations are stale: the heading is the edited part, the extension is announced as an extension, and 1 October has passed. The netEX index page carries the same 1 November date in its “Recommended” rail.
But “most likely” is not a basis for missing a deadline. If you are entering, email and ask — the submission address is in the call — and get the date in writing before you spend a week on a piece. If you are entering close to the wire, assume the organisers may treat 1 October as having closed something and say so in your covering note.
This is the second source we have read today whose own published dates disagree with each other, and the lesson generalises: on an open call, the header and the regulations are different documents maintained by different edits. Read both.
What the terms actually are
From the regulations, which are unusually clean once you get past the date:
- No entry fee
- No age limit
- Submissions exclusively online
- Maximum 3 works, one entry form each
- Wanted: sound art in MP3
- Duration 1 to 15 minutes, with exceptions possible on request
- Works may have been produced between 2020 and 2026
- Delivery by WeTransfer or Swiss Transfer
- Only selected artists will be notified
A free call with no age limit and a six-year eligibility window is genuinely open in a way that paid calls are not — and we have written recently about one that costs €1,500. Nothing here is funded by applicants.
Two terms to note anyway. “Only selected artists will be notified” means silence is the rejection, so diary it and move on rather than waiting. And submission is by email with a file-transfer link, which means you are responsible for the link not expiring before anyone opens it — WeTransfer’s free tier expires links. Use the longest expiry you can, and say in the email when it lapses.
The rights clause, read closely
Every entry must carry a signed declaration. It is short, and worth quoting in full because the second sentence is the one that matters:
I, the submitter/author, declare to be the holder of all rights on the submitted work. In case the work is selected, I give The New Museum of Networked Art the permission to include the work in the project context online and in physical space for exhibitions free of charge.
This is not a rights grab — it is non-exclusive, limited to the project context, and does not transfer copyright or ask for commercial exploitation. For a free call, asking for royalty-free exhibition rights is ordinary and reasonable.
What it does mean concretely: there is no fee and no exhibition payment. You are not being charged, and you are not being paid. The exchange is exposure and inclusion in a curated project. That is a perfectly respectable deal, and it should be a conscious one rather than a surprise — particularly the “and in physical space” clause, which permits physical exhibition of your work indefinitely within the project without further consent or compensation.
Also check the first sentence against reality before you sign it. “Holder of all rights” is a real warranty, and it is not true of a piece containing a sample you did not clear, a field recording made somewhere that restricts recording, or a collaborator who has not agreed.
What you actually get, which is not a wall in Los Angeles
Here the call needs careful reading, and we did some checking.
The project context is LovPOP — Love-Power-Peace — the future is now!, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, described as the 10th collaboration since 2014 between the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles and The New Museum of Networked Art. The stated dates: Los Angeles, 27 March – 8 May 2027, then Cologne, 9 May – 31 July 2027.
Those are the dates for the video art project. For the sound call, the call says this:
It is planned to present complementarily a sound art version as an interactive installation online simultaneously @ The New Museum of Networked Art during this transcontinental collaboration.
So a selected sound work goes into an online interactive installation, running at the same time as the physical shows. It is not a gallery placement at TAM.
We checked the Torrance Art Museum’s own exhibition calendar. The window 27 March – 8 May 2027 is there exactly — which is good corroboration that the timeframe is real and booked, not aspirational. But TAM lists that slot as “Eat The Stars” in the Main Gallery and “Change/Exchange” in Gallery Two. Neither LovPOP nor Love-Power-Peace nor The New Museum of Networked Art appears anywhere on TAM’s site.
The exact date match is too precise to be coincidence, so the most probable explanation is that the networked-art component runs alongside or within shows TAM is advertising under their own titles, with the online sound installation as the separate deliverable the call describes. The organisers’ own word is “planned”. Enter on the basis of the online installation, which is what is actually offered, and treat an LA gallery wall as unconfirmed.
The brief
Worth knowing what they are asking for, because it is thematic rather than open. The curatorial premise draws a line from the 1960s — Vietnam, the Cold War, civil rights, “an overflowing spiritual and physical energy” — to now: Ukraine, democratic versus authoritarian blocs, inequality, climate change, and the risk of losing what was won. The question put to artists is where the necessary energy is today, asking them to turn “ideas of spiritual and physical energy and power as a concept for a sustainable future into exciting sound compositions”.
That is a specific commission, not a general submission window. Work made 2020–2026 is eligible, so existing pieces can enter — but a piece that does not speak to that brief is unlikely to be selected regardless of quality.
If you are entering
Use a separate entry form per piece. Each needs: full name, full address, email and URL, a bio of max 100 words in English; and per work, the title, a download URL, year, duration and a max 100-word synopsis in English. Subject line: “The Sound of Future”.
Sources
- call: The Sound Of Future — netEX, The New Museum of Networked Art
- netEX — calls & deadlines
- Upcoming Exhibitions — Torrance Art Museum
- Alphabet Art Centre, The New Museum of Networked Art