9th Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments (SIVE) Workshop
Bari, Italy and hybrid
5 or 6 October 2026
OVERVIEW
Sonic interaction design is defined as the study and exploitation of sound as one of the principal channels conveying information, meaning, and aesthetic/emotional qualities in interactive contexts. This field lies at the intersection of interaction design, and sound and music computing.
In the virtual/augmented/mixed reality communities (XR hereafter), the focus on research in topics related to auditory feedback has been rather limited when compared, for example, to the focus placed on visual feedback or even on haptic feedback.
The SIVE 2026 is the 9th of this series of workshops: https://sive.create.aau.dk/index.php/pasteditions/
This workshop’s main goal is to increase awareness among the virtual reality community of the importance of sonic elements when designing for XR. We will also discuss how research in other related fields such as film sound theory, product sound design, sound and music computing, game sound design, and accessibility, can inform designers of XR environments. Moreover, the workshop will feature state-of-the-art research on the field of sound for XR environments.
TOPICS
Submissions of research papers outlining ongoing research in interactive sound for virtual environments are welcome.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
- Sound design and synthesis for XR environments
- Sound modeling and rendering for XR environments
- Multisensory (audio-visual and/or audio-haptics) interactions
- Gestural control and action-sound mapping in XR
- XR for Musical Expression
- Perception-action loop in multimodal XR
- Sound spatialisation and auralization
- Binaural sound and head-related transfer functions
- Headphones and speakers reproduction
- Mobile XR applications and technologies of interactive sonification
- Evaluation of user experience and sound quality
- Virtual prototyping of devices and interactions involving sound
- SIVE for accessibility
- Audio only SIVE
IMPORTANT DATES
- Submission deadline: 5 July, 2026
- Acceptance notifications issued: 17 July, 2026
- Camera-ready materials: 1 August, 2026
- Workshop date: 5 or 6 October, 2026
Each deadline is 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) == GMT/UTC-12:00 on the stated day, irrespective of the submitter’s location.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
The submission website is: Microsoft CMT*
We consider three categories of contributions:
(C1) Papers should be 4-6 pages in length and prepared using the IEEE VGTC format. For accepted papers, authors must prepare a 5 minutes video to be delivered during the workshop.
(C2) Posters should be 2-4 pages in length and prepared according to the same template.
(C3) Demos should be 2-4 pages in length and prepared according to the same template, with an artefact shown at the conference.
Accepted papers/abstracts (all categories) will be included in the IEEE VR Workshop Proceedings and will be published on IEEE Xplore Digital Library (Scopus indexing service and more). Moreover, accepted XR testing scenarios will be hosted in a public repository linked to our SIVE official website (https://sive.create.aau.dk/)
At least one author per accepted contribution must register for the ISMAR 2026 conference and attend the workshop.
*The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.
ORGANIZERS
Tifanie Bouchara, LISN, Université Paris-Saclay
Stefania Serafin, Technical University of Denmark
Michele Geronazzo, University of Padova
Florent Berthaut, CRIStAL, Université de Lille
Federico Fontana, University of Udine
Lorenzo Picinali, Imperial College London
Romain Michon, INRIA
Rolf Nordahl, Technical University of Denmark
For additional info about SIVE 2026, please write to tifanie.bouchara [at] universite-paris-saclay [dot] fr