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Cube Fest 2026 - Spoken Words

August 21-23, 2026

Graffiti-style CUBE FEST logo emerging from a box on a grungy brick wall background

Cube Fest 2026, taking place on Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus during August 21-23, invites proposals for immersive music, poetry, art, and sound created for concert presentation on high-density loudspeaker arrays (HDLAs). Live performance for HDLA systems, including interaction with acoustic or electro-acoustic instruments, will also be considered. While remaining open to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, Cube Fest 2026 will bring a special focus to the theme of Spoken Words. We encourage submissions that resonate with the Spoken Words theme. 

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline  – February 20, 2026
  • Notification of results  – March 13, 2026
  • Attendance confirmation deadline  – March 27, 2026

Venues

Cube Fest 2026 will present concert programs in two venues: The Cube (134.4.2 channel HDLA) and Perform Studio (88.4 channel HDLA). This year we introduce a new category of presentation: the Tesseract Jukebox. This program will present on-demand performances of multichannel music on the Tesseract, a nearfield performance system that will be installed at the Center for the Arts in the same building as the Cube and Perform Studio. The Tesseract will have a minimum of 8 loudspeakers, with specifications soon to be announced. 

Submission Guidelines

For works that are already in multichannel format, submission specifications will follow. We also welcome submissions that center Spoken Words in the context of immersive sound, but that have not yet been technically realized in a multichannel format. In such cases, we will consider collaborating with the submitting artist(s) to present a multichannel version of their work. 

Guidelines for Multichannel Submissions

Please submit your work in one of the following formats:

  1. Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA) encoded sound file up to 11th Order with ACN component ordering and SN3D normalization.
  2. Mono channel renders for concert presentation in the Perform Studio. We will consider programming works in the Perform Studio for eight or more speakers
  3. Mono channel renders for the 134.4.2 Cub HDLA. Note: this is the maximum channel submission format. We will consider programming works for the Cube with channel counts of 25 and higher.
  4. Generative code for Max/MSP, Pd, or SuperCollider, configured with instructions for performance in either the Cube or Perform Studio.

Room specifications and speaker locations for the Cube and Perform Studio are available here. We require a sampling rate of 48kHz for all submitted audio. If you have any questions about how to prepare and/or submit work, please let us know. To fully explore the musical capabilities of these systems, we encourage submissions across the broadest range of musical practices, with no stylistic limitations. All works submitted in multichannel format will be reviewed with multichannel playback. Works will be evaluated in large part on the effectiveness of the spatial aspects of the work. 

We regret that we are unable to provide funding for artists selected to participate in Cube Fest 2026. We will be happy to send formal letters of invitation in case that might help with local grant applications. All participating artists will have free access to all Cube Fest 2026 events. 

Please submit your proposal by Friday, February 20, 2026.

Application form