Sounds Off: Silence and Sound Absence in Museums

Abstract

This article discusses the role of sound in the museum experience and, more broadly, in the field of cultural welfare. Sound can be both harmful and beneficial to health, depending on the acoustic, cultural, and emotional context: from exposure to harmful noise to scenarios in which sound plays a rehabilitative support role. Sound design, soundscape design, and interactive sonification can play a fundamental role in the creation of active experiences of artistic content within cultural welfare contexts characterized by active participation, psychological wellbeing, and health. Within this framework, we present the guidelines related to the design of interactive sonification in interactive systems, as applied in DanzArTe – Emotional Wellbeing Technology, a protocol and interactive system that offers an embodied experience of visual arts through the interactive sonification of the affective qualities of one’s own movement.   This essay intends to contribute to this international reflection on silence in museums by focussing holistically on all the meanings of silence in the museum, and the various entangled ways in which it can be interpreted. Silence can be an experience integrated into museum visits. Silence can be political and the connections between silence, remembrance and forgetting give silence the force to influence what we choose to remember. Silence can be inclusive. Silence in museums can be liberating, when offering an escape from the constant sensory stimulation of contemporary life. By transcending a sense of responsibility to constantly engage and entertain, silence in museums can allow deeper thought processing and reflection. Case studies will present practical applications of the theoretical framework and the article will therefore offer an overview of the role of the absence of sound in museums by focussing on display, museum narrative, museum perception, and the visitor experience. The broader aim is, in fact, to help define the role that silence in a museum can play during a visit and in visitors’ perception of the heritage on display.