From January 14, 2022 the Sonosfera in Pesaro (inaugurated in January 2020) will host an “exhibition” that will make Raphael’s pictorial suggestions “listenable”. The intention won’t be to create the ‘wow factor’ but to introduce the listener into a new sensory and cognitive experience.
Raffaello in Sonosfera is Professor David Monacchi’s latest project, who also created the Sonosfera itself. His intention, as he says in an interview on the cultural insert of Corriere della Sera a few days ago: “I thank my colleague Luca Baldin (general manager of Smart Building Italy) who shot me an excerpt. My intention is not to amaze the public but to offer a “listening experience philologically and scientifically founded, starting from the sound clues left by the painter himself.” Clues collected by Monacchi and his collaborators in the same frescoes of Raphael’s Vatican Rooms: from the Greek and Roman instruments depicted in the Parnassus, whose sound can be heard, to the composition of electronic music based on Neoplatonic and Pythagorean numerical symbology in the painting entitled The School of Athens. The frescoes in question are then displayed on high-resolution screens, to offer visitors a multi-level experience, where image and sound speak the same language.
Obviously the Sonosphere is partly inspiring the project: it is a cavea similar to an amphitheater but transparent to sound, built to be acoustically perfect, isolated from the outside and completely sound-absorbent inside. The sounds come from 45 speakers positioned in the entire hemispherical surface around the audience and under the cavea, which combine to create a spherical sound field in the centre very close to reality, complemented by a 360° video crown in very high definition. Realised to preserve and make available sound fragments of natural ecosystems that we risk losing forever, it’s also an ambassador of an ecosystem, this time sound, inside Raphael’s frescoes.
www.comune.pesaro.pu.it/cultura/luoghi-della-cultura/teatri/teatri/la-sonosfera
www.museonazionalerossini.it/2022/01/12/raffaello-in-sonosfera
