For our Autumn 2026 issue, Spike looks at the growing obsession with sound—from algorithmic earworms to immersive exhibitions and music made by machines—and asks: Why is something so elusive becoming our favorite way to set the mood?
The answers are eclectic, vibrant, and sometimes dissonant: Aodhan Madden traces hyperpop's sweet rise and sticky demise; Brian Droitcour diagnoses art's age of "vibe"; Alex Quicho indulges the guilty pleasures of AI music. Avant-garde icon
Laurie Anderson talks to Dan Fox;
Travis Jeppesen enters the visceral audiovisual worlds of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel; Isabella Zamboni listens for silence in paintings by Agnes Martin,
R. H. Quaytman, and others; Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) on what sound does to the brain; DJ Courtesy on what art can learn from the club; Ville Haimala of Amnesia Scanner on the musical history of Myspace; Reece Cox on the best sound art LPs; and Steven Phillips-Horst decodes the synthetic future in sonic branding. Plus! A backpage audio diary from Tea Hačić-Vlahović.
Founded by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike (Spike Art Quarterly) is a quarterly magazine on contemporary art published in English which aims at sustaining a vigorous, independent, and meaningful art criticism. At the heart of each issue are feature essays by leading critics and curators on artists making work that plays a significant role in current debates. Situated between art theory and practice and ranging far beyond its editorial base in Vienna and Berlin, Spike is both rigorously academic and stylishly essayistic. Spike's renowned pool of contributing writers, artists, collectors and gallerists observe and reflect on contemporary art and analyse international developments in contemporary culture, offering its readers both intimacy and immediacy through an unusually open editorial approach that is not afraid of controversy and provocation.
