Submitting to Milltown
Milltown is a small city, some years from now, built on the plan of a real one. Everything you can hear in it was put there by somebody. This page explains what to send, how to send it, and what happens to it afterwards.
The short version. Send a sound, tell us where in the city it belongs and what that place used to be, and write a sentence describing it for people who can't hear it. You keep your copyright. Your work goes out under CC BY 4.0, so anyone may reuse it with credit to you. The city opens on [ DATE ] and stays open after.
What to send
There is no brief. Make what you want to make. The only thing we need you to decide is which of the three layers it belongs to, because each one behaves differently in the city.
1 · Street
Something heard outdoors, which will be mixed with everything else nearby as people move around. It should sit in a mix rather than demand attention, and it should loop without an obvious seam. Thirty seconds to three minutes.
2 · Interior
A discrete piece belonging to one building or place, heard on its own when someone goes inside. It plays once, from the beginning, and stops when it ends — so it can have a shape, and it can demand attention. Four minutes at the outside; most of the good ones will be one to three. Nothing of it is audible from the street — a closed door is closed — so it can start from silence.
3 · Citywide
A broadcast, an announcement, a siren test, a weather warning, a message from the Sound Office — something that belongs to the whole city rather than a spot on it. Thirty seconds maximum. One is chosen at random and played once a day, over everything else, whether or not anyone asked for it. That is the nature of the form, so write for someone who is not listening. Nothing profane: this fires without warning, at people who did not choose it, possibly in a classroom.
Writing — not a layer
Besides the three sound layers, you can contribute the place itself. Send a short piece of writing about somewhere in Milltown — what happens there, who uses it, an overheard conversation, a notice pinned to its door, a complaint filed about it. It will sit with that place on the map, and it may well give somebody else the idea for a sound. A few hundred words at most.
Format
- WAV or FLAC, 44.1 or 48 kHz, 16 or 24 bit. Mono or stereo both welcome.
- Don't worry about levels. Everything is loudness-matched on arrival, so a quiet piece will not be lost and a loud one will not dominate.
- Writing as plain text, or in the body of your message. No particular format.
- An image is welcome alongside a piece. No video, and no 3D models.
Also send
- A title, and the name or pseudonym you want credited, with a link if you have one.
- Where in the city it belongs. Pick a place from the map, or say "anywhere" and we'll find it a home. If it belongs to the whole city rather than a spot — a broadcast, a weather event, an announcement — say so.
- A short text description of what is heard. This is not optional: it is how the archive is searched, and how people who can't hear your piece know what you made.
- One or two sentences on how you made it, if you feel like it. People like reading these.
How to send it
Fill in the submission form, which asks for the details above and tells you where to send the file. Anything over [ SIZE ] is easiest as a link to your own storage. We'll confirm receipt within a week.
What you get
Contributors become residents of Milltown. Every resident has a page of their own at a permanent address, listing everything they've put in the city, and a card issued by the Sound Office bearing their resident number and the waveform of their own first sound. It is yours to keep, print, or post.
Terms
- You keep your copyright. Nothing here transfers ownership of your work. You may go on doing whatever you like with it, including selling it.
- Your work is published under CC BY 4.0. That means anyone — including us, including commercial users — may copy, share, remix and build on it, provided they credit you. This is deliberate: it lets the city be remixed, compiled, exhibited, taught from and reused by people we'll never meet. If you are not comfortable with that, please don't submit.
- The same licence applies to everyone. We don't accept per-contributor terms. A collection under mixed licences can't be used as a collection.
- What you grant us specifically. A non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual licence to host, stream and archive your work; to normalise, filter, spatialise, loop or otherwise adapt it as needed for playback in the city; to display it with its metadata and your credit; and to include it in exhibitions, broadcasts, performances, publications, teaching and research about this project.
- Credit. You'll be credited as you ask, including under a pseudonym. Tell us and we'll change it.
- Withdrawal. Ask and we'll remove your work from the city within a reasonable time. Be aware that a CC BY licence, once granted, can't be recalled from anyone who already has a copy. We'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.
- What you're confirming. That the work is yours; that you have the right to licence it; that it contains no third-party music or material you don't have rights to; and that you haven't recorded identifiable people in ways they'd object to. If your piece includes other people's voices, please have asked them.
- Artificial intelligence. We will not sell or licence this collection for use as training data, and we won't use it that way ourselves. We can't promise more than that: a CC BY licence permits uses by third parties that nobody can police. We think an open archive is worth that risk. You may reasonably disagree.
- Curation. We may decline a submission, place it somewhere other than you suggested, or adjust it technically. We won't change what it is without asking you.
- Under 18? Please have a parent or guardian send it on your behalf.
Questions
[ CONTACT ]