The health crisis has not dampened the enthusiasm of cultural institutions and the general public for podcasts. In an interview with Le Quotidien de l’art, Sophie Grange, deputy director of communications at the Musée du Louvre, mentioned the figure of at least 1.5 million listens for the podcast “Les odyssées du Louvre” (co-produced with France Inter). Among the many forms of mediation that can be envisaged, sound also seems a highly relevant and appropriate medium within the walls of museums and monuments. Saturated with images and Visio after a very long year of confinement and distancing, the reopening of cultural venues last spring also confirmed the public’s need to reconnect with more sensitive and material approaches to visiting. Far from being an ephemeral trend, sound is a medium that has long been used in the heritage sector, with a genuine diversity of approaches that make it possible to give meaning to a visit, extend it or address audiences kept at a distance. In today’s image-based society, sound can be a source of creative and experiential innovation.
1. Sound, the narrative thread of a journey
In museums and monuments, the use of digital audio mediation has quite naturally taken up the logic of the guided tour and the use of voice to convey didactic information about the spaces and collections visited as the public strolls along.
Historically, heritage professionals have relied on audioguide solutions to instrumentalize this use of voice. As Sophie Deshayes points out in an article published in the Lettre de l’Ocim, audioguides really took off in the early 2000s. This boom was driven in particular bythe development of cultural tourism, the emergence of new technologies and the development of cultural practices that intensified a culture of listening. Despite the emergence in recent years of a number of new media to replace or complement the audioguide (smartphone applications, web apps, podcasts, etc.), the audioguide has held up particularly well within the context of the visitor’s itinerary. As Guillaume Ducongé, founder of Audiovisit, put it on France Inter in 2019: “Each new offer has merely supplemented the audioguide offer… and only for a while (…) a good third of museum visitors” are still particularly attached to this solution.
Faced with increasing competition from dematerialized mobile solutions offered by start-ups such as Smartapps, the audioguide companies (Audiovisit, Sycomore, Orpheo, rsf etc.) have been quick to innovate and offer other sound-based formats to cultural venues (the audioguide being, after all, only a material support): Web app, podcasts, app, automation of sound triggering through the use of infrared or Bluetooth. In addition to technological innovation, audioguided tours have also been expanded to appeal to a wider audience, with a wider range of languages covered, children’s tours and the use of “well-known voices” to speak to as many people as possible (artists, curators, personalities, actors and actresses). Beyond the desire to widen audiences, the use of editorial techniques has also contributed to the creation of more involving discourses, encouraging the telling of stories or the “playfulness” of the proposed itineraries.
2. Sound, an “all-encompassing” medium conducive to immersion
Like audioguide companies, A highly creative movement driven by scenographers, design studios, laboratories and start-ups has been working for many years, in close collaboration with cultural venues, to create more immersive sound formats. These innovative companies include, by way of illustration, Akken, Narrative and Unendliche Studio.
The sense of immersion created by these sound formats is the result of both technical processes and editorial logic. As far as technical processes are concerned, geolocation and the use of 3D binaural sound contribute to giving visitors the sensation of a “situated” and “spatialized” experience, depending on their experience, their positioning and their wandering through the various spaces of a site. While the use of these technologies seems necessary to work towards an individual apprehension of a sound narrative adapted to a visitor’s environment, the scenarization and editorialization of such a journey are essential. In this respect, the “Confident” tour, offered as part of the public opening of the Hôtel de la Marine on Place de la Concorde, is particularly convincing. The Studio Radio France, RSF, Noise Makers and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux have created 5 sound itineraries.
A hundred or so people were mobilized to create them (60 actors, twenty or so musicians, mixers, sound engineers, sound designers, director, sound engineers, editors). During the design phase, the Hôtel de la Marine was being restored, so filming took place at the Château de Rambouillet to get as close as possible to the acoustics of the site. Visitor itineraries such as “Journey through time” or “Age of Enlightenment” allow visitors to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of this magnificent monument, reliving different scenes that are automatically triggered as they stroll along. Another special feature is the headset provided at the reception desk, designed to provide particularly excellent listening quality and immersion. However, these semi-open headphones do not cover the whole ear, so they can also be used to listen to ambient sounds and maintain contact with other visitors during a group visit. The combination of immersion and lived experience immerses visitors in a past recreated by dialogues and soundscapes, while allowing them access to contemporary sounds produced by the movements and noises of other visitors. This open-minded conviviality between past and present breaks down the isolation often characteristic of such immersive experiences. It also contributes to the emergence of a dual sense of immersion, between sensitive reconstructions and real sensations.
Immersive processes such as these help to renew visitors’ perception of a site or its collections through stories, music and reconstructed environments. The use of a “soundtrack” can encourage other approaches and apprehensions of the details of a work of art. This was the approach adopted by the Château des Ducs de Bretagne, for example, to create animated paintings accompanied by the sound reconstitution of period atmospheres. Drawn from the collections of the Musée d’Histoire de Nantes and digitized in high definition, these digital reproductions of works of art enable visitors to immerse themselves in the various details of a painting. To enhance this sense of visual immersion, Sound4Museum has recreated the soundscape of the port of Nantes in the 19th century. This re-creation encourages a multi-sensory, sensitive and evocative apprehension. The mobilization of the sense of hearing helps to renew the way we look at the work, by reconstituting a soundscape conducive to imagination and reverie. This experience also resonates with the work of Mylène Pardoen, who has also worked on reconstructing soundscapes from the past, such as those of 18th-century Paris’s Grand Châtelet(a fascinating article was published in 2015 in the CNRS journal).
Creation of a soundtrack for the animated tableau la cale de la machine near Les Salorges, Jean-François Sablet
Beyond spatialization and ambience reconstitution, immersion can also be enhanced by the visitor’s physical involvement. The audio terminals created by Losonnante are particularly interesting.
To access the content offered by these kiosks, visitors are invited to place their elbows on them and plug their ears. The contact of the elbows with the kiosk allows the sound to pass through bone conduction to the visitor’s ears. The visitor thus becomes the receiver of the sound, and engages in a listening experience that involves both the content listened to and the posture and total involvement of the body. This listening posture can encourage introspection, attentive listening, meditation or remembrance in places such as memorials or history museums. Sensitive, direct and frugal contact with the woody material of the bollards can, for its part, encourage moments of listening in direct connection with a natural environment (museums, parks, gardens, zoos). Finally, the sounds listened to (sound effects, ambient sounds, music, even texts) contribute to the emergence of listening moments conducive to disconnection or a more acute apprehension of a work, an object or a place. The potential offered by these sensitive approaches is particularly exciting. Various laboratories are also working on the use of other natural elements or materials, such as water or wood, to transmit sound. For those interested, a particularly interesting article on underwater listening was written a few years ago by Michel Redolfi. An experiment conducted at M.I.T. to promote listening through trees can also be consulted.
Finally, as a way of opening up these immersive logics, sound mediations can also encourage active listening, creative participation and even musical composition. This is the ambition behind the recently opened Philharmonie des enfants, designed by Constance Guisset Studio (some of which were co-constructed with children).
The children’s-level tour encourages immersion and creative, poetic exploration of sounds from everyday life, from nature, and from electronic or mechanical instruments. Each installation also promotes a playful, interactive and participatory dimension. This kind of scenography shows just how rich and lively sound can be in terms of mediation and use.
The multiplicity of these different illustrations demonstrates the diversity but also the complementary nature of the approaches that can be envisaged around sound. Didactic, it can also be immersive, both in terms of the narrative or atmosphere it conveys, and in the way it takes hold of the audience’s spaces and bodies. While podcasts seem to be all the rage on the Web and social networks, a host of extensions within the walls of museums and monuments are (also) conceivable. Sound mediation is still very much alive (and a source of many innovations)!
Antoine ROLAND
