Sound and the City. Schermi, stazioni e paesaggio sonoro urbano

[Autom. eng. transl.] Contemporary cities are multisensory, multimodal, multimedia spaces: the media invade not only houses, pockets, hands, but also streets, squares, shopping centers, areas dedicated to socializing and culture, stations. This invasion leads to the multiplication not only of the visual experience, but also of the sound experience. The means of personal and mass communication that fit into the urban fabric increasingly stimulate a synesthetic use. Among them, the video communication screens diffused in each free space (or created ad hoc) continuously transmit a visual and sound flow that intersects with the other flows of vehicles, people and information. Often, dazzled by moving images, we tend to underestimate the importance of sound and the consequences that its use has on the subject. And yet the screens, through their audio diffusion devices, are able to profoundly modify, to contaminate, sometimes even to undermine the soundscapes in which they are placed and find themselves operating. The environmental sound (voices, noises, sounds of nature and technique), personal audio (MP3 players, radio, chatter, even thoughtlessness) and the sound of the screens intersect, struggle, coexist in the decoding of the messages operated by the subjects. The sound reveals - once again - its malleable and ubiquitous nature, but also concrete and ever-present, in an essential word. And the subject enjoys sound and in¬staura - in a more or less conscious way - a complex relationship with the screen, with the information it transmits, with the context in which it is located, with the images and fragments perceived. One of the spaces in which urban screens are most concentrated - both (at least partially) informational and advertising - are the stations, parking and transit areas for flows of people and goods. The gaze is concentrated on these areas - and, above all, the analytical ear: the Central Sta¬zione of Milan, where a continuous loop of spots is repeated in the ambient noise, and the stops of the Milanese underground of Cadorna, Duomo and Centrale , where "underground TV" alternates news, programs and advertising in the short space of time between one train and the next. The mapping of the sources and the sound texts present in the stations and the observation - or rather, a sort of "auscultation" - participant allow to analyze the urban screens, as well as the soundscapes in which they are inserted and which contribute to building. Revealing that the sound of the screens - as regards both the programming and the modes of use - recalls a television model, when not post-television; and that the potential of sound, in the absence of careful planning, is not adequately exploited and often ends up being counterproductive with respect to the desired communicative purposes.