Walk into a museum today and you’ll likely see visitors absorbed in their phones — scanning QR codes, scrolling through apps, or listening to short audio clips. Technology has made museums more interactive than ever, yet something vital often remains missing: the sense of being fully immersed. What if, instead of glancing down at a screen, visitors could navigate an exhibition entirely through sound — guided not by text or touchscreens but by an invisible, living soundtrack that responds to their every move?
That’s the vision behind NOUS Sonic, a project exploring how spatial and interactive sound can change the way we experience culture. It’s an argument for sound as a storyteller, not a supplement — a medium that can connect visitors emotionally and physically to the art and history around them.
Reclaiming the Forgotten Sense
In the digital era, museums have become both more accessible and more fragmented. As audio guides, apps, and multimedia displays proliferate, the act of listening has often been reduced to background noise. “Most museum mediation today happens through screens. Sound tends to be neglected — both in quality and in content. There’s often no coherent story, just fragments.”
NOUS Sonic wants to change that. Its concept is simple but radical: let sound be the map. Instead of reading, pointing, or tapping, visitors follow sound itself — footsteps leading toward a whispering statue, a distant melody drawing them into a painting’s world. It’s an approach that transforms the visitor from a passive observer into an active listener. The museum becomes less a collection of objects and more a journey of discovery, unfolding in time and space through the rhythm of sound.
Inside the Sonic Museum
Behind the poetry of this idea lies a remarkable layer of technology. Using ultra-wideband (UWB) indoor navigation, NOUS Sonic’s system can locate each visitor’s position with pinpoint accuracy. Every visitor wears sleek, lightweight headphones capable of holding up to 20 hours of sound — from delicate ambient recordings to full 3D binaural compositions. As the listener moves, the soundscape reacts: turning the head changes directionality, stepping forward deepens the mix, and each new space triggers its own acoustic environment. In essence, the museum becomes a living instrument — an architectural sound composition that responds in real time to its audience.
Telling Stories Through Sound
Sound, in this model, isn’t an afterthought. It’s the script, the set design, and the actor all at once. Curators and sound designers craft narrative soundscapes that combine music, voice, and ambient layers to evoke atmosphere and emotion. The result is storytelling that goes beyond explanation — it seduces the visitor into the experience.
The museum becomes what NOUS Sonic calls a cinema for the ears: a space where every step is part of the story.
Where It Already Happened
“Cinema for the Ears”
Louvre Abu Dhabi (UAE)
One of the earliest large-scale examples was a project at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Conceived by Catherine Monlouis Félicité and produced by Alexandre Plank, with a script by Stéphane Michaka and sound by Jonathan Morali, the project takes visitors on a one-hour journey through 5,000 years of art history — entirely through sound.
The experience unfolds like an audio film. A single narrator guides the listener as layers of music and ambient sound bloom around the artworks, creating a cinematic sense of movement and scale.
“Stage Play”
Hans Christian Andersen Museum, Odense (Denmark)
In Denmark, between 2021 and 2024, sound brought the world of Hans Christian Andersen to life in a museum that feels more like a stage play. Here, Andersen himself speaks to visitors, alongside voices from his fairy-tale characters.
The technology even works both ways: visitors’ movements trigger sounds, and the headphones can activate physical objects in return. It’s a two-way conversation between story and space — a fitting tribute to a writer whose imagination blurred the line between reality and fantasy.
The collaboration between Eventcomm and British sound designer Lewis Gibson attracted more than 750,000 visitors. With 600 headphones in rotation and up to 2,000 visitors a day, it became one of the most immersive — and most talked-about — experiences.
“The Narrative Museum”
Emily Hobhouse Museum, Cornwall (UK)
At the newly opened Emily Hobhouse Museum in Cornwall, sound becomes a tool for empathy. Designed by KossmannDeJong with Bindfilm and Turbo Audio, the exhibition traces the activist’s life and work in education, women’s rights, and social reform during the Boer Wars.
Each room represents a chapter in her story, characterized by distinct sound textures and emotional tones. Visitors hear politicians, soldiers, and Hobhouse herself — their voices weaving together across time.
The experience is moving, intimate, and human. “You feel as if you’re walking through her conscience,” one visitor remarked. Since opening in 2024, the museum has already welcomed over 40,000 visitors.
Listening as a Form of Agency
Beyond the exhibitions, NOUS Sonic also engages with deeper questions: what does it mean to listen actively? Artist and researcher Nico Espinoza explores this in his concept Attunement, in which visitors’ proximity and movement continuously modulate a field of sound. “Listening becomes a form of participation,” he explains — not about control, but about sensitivity. The artist suggests that listening is more than hearing; it’s a way of being present, of tuning in to meaning beyond words. The piece was shown at the Mafra Palace (Portugal) from 16–19 October 2025.
The Future Sounds of the Museum
If NOUS Sonic has its way, the future museum will no longer rely on static displays and silent contemplation. Instead, it will be a multisensory landscape, where visitors move through stories that breathe and evolve around them.
Sound, with its power to bypass intellect and speak directly to emotion, offers museums a new language — one that is immersive, inclusive, and deeply human.
Through technologies like 3D audio and precise spatial mapping, every visitor can experience their own version of the story, discovering not only the art itself but also their relationship to it.
In the end, NOUS Sonic’s vision is both simple and profound: to turn the museum into a cinema for the ears, where the past isn’t just displayed — it’s heard, felt, and reimagined in the resonant spaces between sound and silence.
By Wolfgang Schreiner, CEO NOUS. A synthesis of the talk held at the Sound in Museums conference in Mafra, Portugal, Oct. 2025.