Rewilding Portugal

An evening guided visit to the Penascosa rock art site, one of the main open-air Palaeolithic engraving sites in the Côa Valley. The carvings are best seen in low or raking light. The night visit is one of the more memorable ways to encounter them. Capacity: 40 places. Pre-registration required.

Alex Braga

A performance, a guided meditation, a 30-minute experience. TECHNO CONSCIENCE opens Act in Synch IV by creating space to arrive, settle, and think differently — before the work begins. Over 30 minutes, music, live visuals, and a slowly evolving mantra build toward what artist Alex Braga calls digital transcendence. The work uses A-MINT, an adaptive AI ecosystem developed with researchers at Roma Tre University and the University of Catania. The system responds in real time to the room — acoustic environment, audience attention, spatial dynamics — so every performance is different. TECHNO CONSCIENCE has been staged at Mozilla Festival Barcelona, Ars Electronica, Mutek, Sónar, and the Centre Pompidou. At CÔA, it opens Day 1.

Iminza Mbwaya

What would it mean to recognise nature as a rightsholder in the music industry? SoundsRight is an initiative developed with UNESCO, Spotify, and Brian Eno that channels royalties from recordings of natural sounds back to conservation. Iminza Mbwaya, Associate Director of SoundsRight and the Sounds of Earth project, opens Act in Synch IV by asking what it would look like to genuinely include the non-human in our frameworks for creative rights.

Virginie Berger

One of Europe's leading voices on music law and the creative implications of artificial intelligence, Virginie Berger has spent years at the intersection of copyright, platform policy, and the rights of creators in the digital age. Her keynote examines what the current AI landscape actually means for music rights — not as future speculation, but as the present reality that the industry is already navigating. [FLAG: Confirm talk title with Virginie.]

Pedro Prata

Before the afternoon workshops, we take the work outside. Pedro, CEO of Rewilding Portugal, presents the organisation's work in the Côa Valley — one of their core project areas, where wolves, wild horses, and natural river processes are gradually being restored. The presentation is followed by a guided walk through the landscape around the museum. The Côa Valley is the reason we are here. This session connects the conference's metaphor — rewilding — to the actual ecological work happening in the hills beyond the window.

Facilitated by Gabriella Gal · Yvan Boudillet · [FLAG: 3rd facilitator + wingmen needed]

Three groups, two hours. Day 1 takes stock of where the music industry actually is — not where the official version says it is. Participants work through a series of claims about AI, data, creativity, and fairness. Vote on them. Discuss. See whether the numbers shift. Two conversation drivers per group are chosen for the productive tension between their perspectives, not their agreement. The session ends outside, with a card, three prompts, and a view of the valley.

After the breakout groups, everyone reconvenes briefly in the auditorium, then takes a card outside. The space overlooking the Côa Valley is yours for the next hour. Three questions on the card: Technology has reshaped how music is made, distributed, and heard. Before we arrive, it's worth sitting with three questions: What have we lost on the way to where we are now? What have we gained? What would you like 2036 to look like? Cards are anonymous. Write alone, or talk to someone the hour is yours to use. When you're done, drop your card in the box and pick up a colour token. That colour is your dinner table. The cards don't disappear. They become the raw material for Day 2.

Rewilding Portugal

An evening screening open to the wider local community.

Guided by Fernando [FLAG: last name needed] · Rewilding Portugal

An optional early morning walk in the valley. The Côa is one of the best sites in Iberia for raptors and riverside species — the kind of thing you can’t see from inside a conference room. Capacity limited. Pre-registration required.

Hannes Tschürtz

A deliberately light opening to Day 2. Hannes Tschürtz (Ink Music, Vienna) opens the morning with a short, intentionally un-serious session. The format is loose. The content is useless. The effect is to get people in the room and ready for the harder work that follows.

Facilitated by Gabriella Gal · Yvan Boudillet ·

Day 2 begins with someone else’s words. Each participant receives an anonymous card written during the Golden Hour — and the conversation opens there: what they’re holding, what it brings up, what they notice. Then it turns. Participants share their own vision for 2036, and the group works backwards together: what would actually need to be in place? What’s the smallest believable step from here? The ideas that land might end up on vinyl.

Julian Krohn · Ian Neil · Thibault Deboaisne · Patricia Carrera · Bruno Muñoz · Frédéric Schindler · Sérgio Pimentel · Clément Souchier · Hanna-Greet Peetson · Žiga Drofenik · Marta Ramalho · Lisa Humann · Francesca Barone · Alicia Richards · Terese Gustafsson · Patrick Joest · Kevin Richards · [FLAG: KUKLA — pending confirmation]

A roundtable of international experts discusses the goals and the findings of the Europe in Synch 2.0 project towards an improved European Synch business environment. A closed working session for music supervisors and sync professionals. Runs in parallel with the museum tour. Moderator: Markus Linde

More details soon.

A guided visit to the CÔA Museum’s collection and the Palaeolithic engravings in the valley. The Côa rock art site holds one of the largest concentrations of open-air Palaeolithic engravings in the world — over 1,000 individual animal and human figures carved along the riverbanks over a period of 20,000 years. This session brings delegates into direct contact with the landscape we’ve been using as a frame for the whole event. Runs in parallel with the music supervisors roundtable.

Nuno Saraiva (AMAEI), Miguel Carretas (Audiogest), Eva Karman Reinhold (SOM/IMPALA) and Shain Shapiro

As the Europe in Synch Program draws to a close, Project Coordinator Nuno Saraiva (AMAEI) invites Miguel Carretas (Audiogest), Eva Karman Reinhold (SOM/IMPALA) and Shain Shapiro (Sound Diplomacy) to reflect on the four year-project as well as identifying future-facing policy strategies that can improve the European synch landscape. How can we place more European music in audio-visual productions? How can we work towards sustainability - financial and environmental - in the music industry and synch? And ultimately, what do we consider most important for the future of music at the intersection point with the audiovisual sector?

A short closing ceremony before the evening. A direct-to-vinyl record produced from field recordings made in the Côa Valley and shaped through an AI-generated narrative — is formally presented and handed over to the CÔA Museum’s permanent collection.

The Wolfball will take place on March 28 at the Vila Nova de Foz Côa Cultural Centre, serving as the closing ceremony of Act in Synch, this event is a truly unique fundraising event: in addition to dinner and a welcome reception, it features a one-of-a-kind concert created especially for the occasion. In the week leading up to the event, a music residency in Vila Nova de Foz Côa will bring together Portuguese and international artists to collaborate on new music inspired by the “Sounds of Côa”. The traditional sounds of the Côa Valley — both natural and human — were recorded and curated throughout February and March by Vasco Ribeiro Casais, also known as OMIRI, who has extensive experience in local folk music preservation projects. The proceeds from the Wolfball — which aims to bring together professionals from the music industry, local communities and biosphere conservation experts — will support Rewilding Portugal, specifically funding actions to protect and preserve species such as the Iberian wolf, as well as raising awareness for this cause. Organized in partnership by Scarlet Bloom, Lusitanian Music Publishing, with support from the Municipality of Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Mermaids & Albatrosses Digital Distribution & Fundação GDA, admission tickets cost €100 (including dinner and the concert). The concert itself will be free to attend for the local population, who may alternatively contribute to the fundraising effort through voluntary donations of any amount.