UNPOP's mission is to present uninterrupted 8-channel audio pieces from dusk until dawn on every night of the Burning Man event. Each evening will feature a curated playlist of unique works. In order to pull this off, we need your pieces!
Speaker diagram, with channel numbering scheme

If you are interested in having your work programmed as part of our playlists for UNPOP @ Burning Man 2022, please fill out and submit the form below.

Here's everything you need to understand about participating in UNPOP:
  • There is no artist fee. All artwork shown/played/given at Burning Man is intended to be a gift, in keeping with the event's ten principles. This IS an opportunity to have your work heard in a unique outdoor environment by audiences who will really listen with open ears (and may also have enhanced their perceptual capabilities).

  • We will not be passing out programs, listing names, announcing order, etc. So, while your piece may be heard by dozens, or even hundreds of people, your name and the name of the piece will be unknown to most people. This is in keeping with the uncredited nature of much Burning Man art. However, we will be listing your name and the title of your work here, as well as where it fell within each evening's playlist, so dedicated listeners who want to figure out what they were listening to will be able to look it up.

  • We are seeking diverse pieces that can include field recordings, academic electroacoustic pieces, ambient/drone music, textural tone sculpture works, experimental sound art, etc etc. However, the one thing we WON'T play is beat-oriented dance music - since such music is already widely available throughout Burning Man. We are looking for music that is different. This doesn't mean it can't contain beats or pulses or rhythms or whatever, but if it is primarily a dance track, it probably won't fit in with our programming goals.

  • SOME TECHNICAL INFO: The system through which the works will be played is based on 8 custom-built Isobel hemispherical speakers, and two subs. There is nothing special to be done to prepare your octophonic piece for playback in this system -- the wide dispersion angles of the speakers combined with the walls/baffles simply create an ideal listening environment with an unusually large sweet spot.

  • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: We are looking for fixed-media multichannel works. We do not have the capacity to run generative audio software in this installation *yet*. Pieces with fewer than 8 channels will be considered, but please let us know how you'd like the channels to be routed/mapped (we will NOT be diffusing the works live). There are no length requirements. The piece can be very short or very long or anything in between. Currently, some pieces in our collection are 90 seconds long, others are over an hour. Most fall between 10-30 minutes, but we welcome whatever you want to send us. There is no limit to how many pieces you can submit.

  • We are ESPECIALLY interested in & welcoming of pieces by composers/artists identifying as women, non-binary, LGBTQ+, and traditionally under-represented minorities.

  • SUBMISSION PROCESS: Please create a .zip archive of your submission and upload it to the file-sharing service of your choice (Google Drive, DropBox, etc.). Then, please paste a link to your submission into the form below, along with the other requested information. The .zip should contain a single 8-channel .wav or .aif file, or eight mono .aif or .wav files, labelled 1-8. A subwoofer channel is optional. If you have one (we will extract sub-frequency signals out of the other 8). See diagram above for speaker channel numbering. Include a readme.txt file or equivalent for any special instructions, program notes (we will read them & enjoy them) and anything else you want to include.

  • Deadline for submissions: August 3, 2022 (though we'd love to get them sooner, too!)

  • If you have questions about submitting or about this project in general that are not covered here, please reach out to us at speaker@unpopularmusic.camp and either Scott or Stephan will get back to you as soon as we can!