A Journey of Artistic Discovery Across Europe
[codex] I. [OPEN CALL] for MUSICAL INSTRUMENT INVENTORS, DESIGNERS, AND DEVELOPERS
.abeceda Institute [Institute for research in art, critical thought, and philos…
Participation fee
– 400 EUR [early application - submitted within the first three days following the opening of the call - before September 2, 2026]– 500 EUR [students]
– 600 EUR [standard application]
– 700 EUR [payment plan in 2 installments]
Team application:
– 400 EUR per team member
Auditors:
– 150 EUR
Details
[codex] I.
RESIDENCY PROGRAM for MUSICAL INSTRUMENT INVENTORS, DESIGNERS, AND DEVELOPERS
[2026/2027]
SOURCE, SUBSTANCE, AND STRUCTURE
Paradigms as Musical Knowledge: Genealogies and Futures
An international residency investigating the historical foundations and future trajectories of originality, authenticity, and excellence.
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FORMAT:
Stage I. | October 2026
- 2 online seminars
- Participants present their practices, design methodologies, prototypes, and works in development
- Q&A
Stage II. | December 2026
- 2 online seminars
- Critical inquiry and practice-led experimentation centered on SOURCE, SUBSTANCE, AND STRUCTURE: Paradigms as Musical Knowledge
- Q&A
Stage III. | June 2027
- Performances, demonstrations, instrument-development laboratories, and research presentations at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia
The [codex] residency approaches musical instruments as historically situated, embodied, and transformable paradigms of knowledge. It brings together an international cohort of instrument inventors, designers, and developers to investigate how materials, mechanisms, interfaces, acoustics, electronics, software, fabrication methods, performance techniques, and interactive systems shape what can be produced, perceived, performed, and recognized as music.
The program unfolds across three interdependent fields of inquiry. SOURCE examines the genealogical, material, and institutional conditions from which instruments emerge: historical models, craft traditions, patents, diagrams, technologies, pedagogies, resources, communities, and histories of transmission. SUBSTANCE investigates how instruments become materially and perceptually operative through bodies, components, gestures, resistance, resonance, energy, sound, temporality, and listening. STRUCTURE examines the relations through which instruments organize musical action, distribute agency, generate form, and establish or contest criteria of originality, authenticity, and excellence.
Throughout the online sessions, participants develop instruments, interfaces, prototypes, performances, documentation, artistic research, writing, and experimental formats. Through sustained exchange, analysis, and dialogue with peers and mentors, they articulate their methodologies, identify inherited assumptions, test alternative models, refine their designs, and situate their practices within technological genealogies and future-oriented forms of invention.
The residency culminates at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia, EU, where participants present their work through performances, demonstrations, instrument-development laboratories, and research presentations. The program positions instrument invention and development as artistic and epistemic practices through which historical knowledge, experiment
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APPLY by September 15, 2026
More information: https://codex-infra.com/
Participation fee
– 400 EUR [early application - submitted within the first three days following the opening of the call - before September 2, 2026]– 500 EUR [students]
– 600 EUR [standard application]
– 700 EUR [payment plan in 2 installments]
Team application:
– 400 EUR per team member
Auditors:
– 150 EUR