Culture Sounds

Culture Sounds puts the narrative and emotional power of sound at the service of culture and art. On one side, the creative communities around cultural venues find in a digital platform a way to rethink cultural mediation in a contemporary, participatory way, so that many more people can make cultural heritage their own. On the other, well-designed crowdfunding aims to create sustainable value from cultural heritage, while respecting what makes each cultural venue unique.

To carry out this work, Innextart joined forces with Mezzoforte Società Cooperativa.

The project connects three museums in Lombardy:

Museo Diocesano di Brescia

Set in the main cloister of the former Franciscan convent of San Giuseppe, the Museo Diocesano di Brescia holds paintings, sculpture and sacred goldsmiths’ work, as well as icons of the Orthodox tradition, precious liturgical textiles, illuminated manuscripts and the contemporary art it has acquired in recent years. The collections are laid out in an accessible display, with inclusive devices that let visitors with visual and motor disabilities enjoy the works. Through its public program, the museum is always busy with educational activities, cultural events, guided tours, talks and meetings where citizens exchange ideas.

Museo Braille - Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano

The Louis Braille Museum of the Istituto dei Ciechi holds a wide selection of instruments, special machines, books printed for blind people and tactile teaching materials, which show how the school and its teaching methods for blind people have changed. Alongside these are the art collections, with a large gallery of 200 portraits of benefactors, the collections of musical instruments, the historical archive and the photographic archive.

Museo della Ceramica di Saronno “Giuseppe Gianetti”

Since 1994 the Museo della Ceramica Giuseppe Gianetti has collected, cared for, studied and renewed a collection of historic and contemporary ceramics. The museum is in a well-preserved villa from the 1940s, surrounded by a garden with a small rose garden and contemporary art installations. The collections are spread over three floors, which also hold a space for temporary exhibitions.

Culture Sounds meets the specific needs of the museums involved, starting with these activities:

1. Sound content made to measure for specific points of interest, such as artworks and selected spaces in the museum: narration in several languages, dedicated 3D audio sound design, and recording and production of original sound and music.
2. Different visitor routes, accessible to every kind of audience and especially to people with low vision.
3. Free access to agami, the new cloud platform for listening to the sound content, for the whole project.
4. Hardware for “open-ear” multisensory routes: mobile devices with bone-conduction headphones, which leave the ear canal free.
5. Fundraising initiatives designed around a curatorial project developed in close contact with the cultural venues.

Who it is for

Inspired by the principles of the New European Bauhaus (beautiful, sustainable, together), the project speaks to a wide audience, with particular care for how people with visual disabilities experience it, thanks to immersive listening and inclusive open-ear bone-conduction headphones.

Because the tailor-made sound routes are easy to follow, they do two things: they support inclusion and neurodiversity in front of the works and along the museum routes, and they offer the visit as a therapeutic experience. This follows the WHO, which since 2019 has advised doctors to “prescribe” art and culture, as close encounters with beauty and genius are more and more recognized as important factors in health. The content is designed for a new renaissance where art, science and technology meet, centered on easy-to-use tools, people’s well-being and design led by their needs. The project also supports advanced museum education, which can be adapted to every age, with content tuned to each audience.

Listening is immediate and needs no complex interaction, so cultural venues can use the agami platform to widen their audiences and engage them, in dialogue with local schools, and to draw attention to cultural heritage.