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What sound does a museum produce? What taste does it have? What are its surfaces like, and what fragrance do its halls emit? At INFOGESTIONE, we have defined and we study this as “expressive or didactic organoletticity”: the sensory component captured by our perceptive systems, forming the foundation of every cognitive and relational process. How does all this manifest within museum realities?

The interview

Network Museum – What is culture, and what is it for?

OFT – Culture is nourishment for the human soul, the medium through which we evolve and learn to distinguish truth from falsehood. Its etymology, from the Latin colere, meaning to cultivate, already tells us much: cultivating the land, but also the individual, the mind, the thought.
It is about caring for our formation, our education, developing intellectual, ethical, moral, and even physical capacities through every form of knowledge: both high and popular.
Culture makes us better. It is beauty, it is what we constantly seek. As Ulysses says in Canto XXVI of the Inferno: “You were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
For those of us who work with words and their sound, culture is also transmitted memory, constructed relationship. It is what allows us to understand the world, recognize the roots of our being, and honor it.
Culture and civilization influence each other, they are two sides of the same coin. But culture, in itself, is the food we use to nourish our essence— so that we do not live as brutes, but precisely to pursue virtue and knowledge.

Network Museum – What is a museum, and what is its role?

OFT – A museum is a sacred place, dedicated to the Muses—daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and protectors of the arts, sciences, and thought. It is a treasure chest of testimonies, but visiting it is not enough: a museum must be lived, listened to, inhabited.
Traditionally understood as a building that houses artworks, relics, and objects of historical, scientific, anthropological, or cultural interest, the museum, however, is much more than that: It is a relational space that must welcome, transform, and respect.
It is a place open to everyone and for everyone, where knowledge is not displayed but shared. It is a temple for those who enter; it is an experience for those who seek.
When we worked with the MU-CH, Chemistry Museum of Settimo Torinese, we explored the concept of the museum as an inclusive and educational environment:
– audioguides produced with students, where narration was enriched with soundscapes and music
– content accessible in Italian Sign Language (LIS), to embrace the sensibilities of sensory disability.
That is why new technologies are not enemies, but allies of a museum vision that places the human being at the center, each individual, with their own ability to access, understand, and feel.
A museum, then, is much more than a physical structure. It is a place where memory meets wonder, where knowledge becomes experience, and where hospitality transforms into a form of understanding.

Network Museum – What is OFT – Officina Fonica Torino?

OFT – Our recording studio is much more than a technical space: it is a laboratory of research, experimentation, and freedom.
It began as a bold, artisanal adventure by two professionals who are also friends— deeply passionate about what they do. A place where work is not just production, but care for sound, relationship with time, and shared passion.
We embrace analog technology—like the old reel-to-reel tape recorder— to reconnect with a warm, human, imperfect sound. A sound that stands in contrast to the coldness of certain digital systems and an artificial intelligence that risks flattening acoustic nuance.
Naturally, we also use digital tools: software such as ProTools and FinalCut, 24-track recording, dedicated spaces for voiceover and video production. But we always seek balance, because it’s not technology that makes sound, it’s the thought that guides it.
Our core principle is freedom. We choose what to create, what to welcome, what to propose. The latest project? A voiceover for a promotional video targeting the Spanish market, commissioned by Acqua Sant’Anna.
Our studio is not just a technical location. It is a sound workshop, where work becomes a creative gesture, and where sound regains its own voice.

Network Museum – What role do words, sounds, and music play in museum expression?

OFT – Words, sounds, and music are expressive and relational tools capable of transforming a museum visit into a narrative and sensory experience.
In the Chemistry Museum project, for example, we used each element with conscious intent.
Words guide and accompany thought, spoken by young voices who have learned to narrate with sincerity.
Sounds create atmosphere, constructing real acoustic contexts, keys, footsteps, noises synchronized with actions.
Music evokes emotion, not as decorative background, but as a genuine transmission of feeling
These elements enrich, they do not decorate. They help intercept the diverse sensibilities of visitors, which vary in age, background, culture, and imagination.
The use of multimedia technologies, if approached with discretion and respect, can break down barriers, even physical ones, and make culture more tangible, less abstract. But it must not be invasive. It should accompany, not overwhelm. It must leave space for reflection, for personal inner experience, avoiding standardization and pre-packaged pathways.
We created a connection between school, community, and museum: voices that will grow up and recognize themselves in the sonic memory of space.
Ultimately, visiting a museum is not consumption. It is relationship. And sound, when well used, restores to the visit the time of wonder, freedom, and individual awe.

Network Museum – How can sonic technologies contribute to accessibility?

OFT – Sonic technologies can be a valuable resource in making museums accessible to everyone, regardless of sensory abilities.
For those who are blind, sound can create spatial awareness, guide orientation, and tell stories. It can build environments, evoke actions, and provide narration that accompanies the visit. We’ve met a blind orchestra conductor and a skier who became a world champion thanks to acoustic signals: in such cases, sound becomes both guide and possibility.
For those who are deaf, vibrational experiences can serve as a form of sensory engagement. It’s precisely along these lines that the project by Officina Fonica for the Chemistry Museum (MU-CH) was developed:
– we created audiovisual guides in LIS (Italian Sign Language), designed for the Deaf community
– standard audio guides were produced with the participation of children from a local school—a complex yet deeply meaningful undertaking.
The goal is clear: to allow every person, regardless of disability, to access a museum experience that is rich, free, and respectful. What matters most is to ask, not assume. Ask directly those with disabilities what their actual needs are. Because accessibility is not theoretical inclusion—it is genuine relationship, built with those who must navigate the museum using different tools and perceptions, but with the same right to wonder.

Network Museum – Does it still make sense to speak about sonic education, silence, and listening?

OFT – Yes. It absolutely does. Sound is memory, relationship, identity. It is not merely acoustic perception, but an experience that involves the whole person.
Sonic education allows museum visits to become deeper and more evocative, richer from a didactic point of view, and more effective emotionally. We memorize through our senses, and the more we engage them, the greater the potential for learning and wonder.
Sound and speech can “rejuvenate” the museum’s image, making it more welcoming, dynamic, and truly inviting. But it’s not just about auditory stimulation, it’s about authentic listening.
We asked young people: “What is silence for you?” Many replied that it scares them. They associate it with emptiness, with absence. Yet silence, for us, is full, a container of sounds, a living pause, a space that welcomes and opens up to depth.
Silence is spiritual. It is intimate. We need a place that educates in listening: a Museum of Silence that counters constant noise, and gives society the chance to be with itself once more.
Sound leads. But it is silence that enables true listening. And from there… the real experience begins.

Network Museum – How should a museum organize itself to make use of new sonic technologies?

OFT – We should return to oral storytelling. Sounds help us memorize, understand, and engage.
When used wisely, sonic technologies can personalize the experience and bridge cognitive gaps. Words must return to the heart of the museum experience.
Sound deserves the same dignity as light. It must not be placed as a secondary element. Just like in theater: speech leads, while light and sound accompany.

Network Museum – What is the future of words, sounds, and music?

OFT – We hope the future of words, sounds, and music will be filled with warm, human, imperfect tones. This is not purist snobbery, it is awareness that imperfection is beauty, that truth is not crystal clear, and that emotions are rarely neat and precise.
Artificial intelligence can help greatly: it simplifies, automates, speeds up technical processes, and allows for a more creative use of time. But it must not replace the human voice. Because a sampled voice may sound like us… but it does not feel like us.
A real speaker, even with imperfections, communicates more. It carries that spark, that brilliant dissonance which makes an interpretation unique. It’s like the difference between analog and digital recording: white silence doesn’t exist in nature, and too much cleanliness strips away truth, humanity, and warmth.
The risk is that excessive virtuality flattens everything, that we lose the distinctiveness of lived sound, the emotion embodied in words.
Technology must be used, but not to replace, rather to accompany.
That’s why, at Officina Fonica Torino, we continue to record personally, nurturing the manual, creative, artisanal dimension of sound.Because the soul cannot be artificially generated. And the sonic future we envision… is one where technology makes space for the imperfection that moves us.

Network Museum – How do you imagine the future of culture and of museums in particular?

OFT -The future of culture and museums depends on one fundamental choice: to recognize their value, or to continue undervaluing them until they fade away.
If we keep believing that “you can’t live off culture,” that it brings no profit, no revenue… we’re heading down a dark path. It’s a grave mistake. Culture is the foundation upon which civilizations are built: without it, there is no society, no economy, no progress.
We need to cultivate minds, nurture imagination, educate in complexity. We need philosophers, physicists, thinkers, poets. Because free thought is the engine of research and without research, there is no advancement.
Culture is food for the soul. But it must not be consumed. It must be savored, respected, and invested in.
In this landscape, museums are guardians and catalysts. They preserve, yes, but they also stimulate. They must be living parts of the social fabric spaces where knowledge is not displayed… but shared.
Our hope is to restore honor and value to culture, not as a pastime for the privileged, but as an ethical and moral cornerstone of society.
Ignorance breeds brutality. The sleep of reason produces monsters.
We need a vision that is greater, more visionary, more luminous, where culture is no longer seen as a luxury, but as a vital necessity.
And if the future must choose between consumption and awareness… may the museum be the place where awareness triumphs.

Network Museum – Now, the question related to this year’s theme: What is a smart museum?

OFT – A smart museum is not one that simply uses the most advanced technologies, but one that knows how to choose among the available opportunities with awareness, humanity, and vision.
The term “smart” comes from the Latin intelligens, present participle of intelligere, that is, inter-legere: to read between, to discern, to understand.
A smart museum is made up of smart people, like those at the Chemistry Museum: a team that knows its limits, but also knows how to ask for help, seek solutions, and share knowledge. It consists of women and men capable of telling what they know with generosity and humility.
A smart museum doesn’t pursue progress for its own sake, it interprets it, accompanies it, and sometimes even goes backward to recover educational methods from the past, when they help foster better understanding.
It is able to anticipate, to listen to society, to avoid turning culture into a product to be sold, packaged, or consumed.
Because culture, like knowledge, requires responsibility, integrity, intellectual honesty and delicacy in how it’s handled.
A smart museum is not a showcase, it is a choice. It knows how to remain secular, pure, free. It knows how to defend culture from commodification. And it knows how to tell the story of knowledge as something that carries life and human ingenuity, not consumption.