Mapping the Soundscape in Communicative Forms for Cultural Heritage: Between Realism and Symbolism

The dimension of sound plays a central role as a form of cultural representation. Sound is a means of knowledge and experiential involvement, as it is inextricably linked to place and space, mind and body, cultural context and emotion. This contribution aims to explore how sound design follows different paradigms and methods in the various media. Virtual reality, videogame, cinema and documentary have differently codified rules to provide acoustic verisimilitude to the simulated space, to orient or stimulate the user, to suggest contents or evoke events and to emotionally involve the public. These rules follow artistic principles closer to psychoacoustics than to scientific reproduction of sound in the simulated space. Under what conditions, however, is the scientific simulation of an acoustic space preferable to the more common paradigms of psychoacoustics? How could this be created? Immersive and non-immersive virtual reality for cultural heritage is currently the field of experimentation most open to future developments. Some virtual reality and mixed reality applications will be presented, dedicated to archaeological or historical-artistic contexts, where a fundamental relationship between sound and multisensory interaction has been created.