Through the relationships between people and things, places take on cosy, aseptic, angular, soft or sociable tones. Among these places, we call the ones we inhabit ‘homes’. Whether they are family nests, institutions or businesses, whatever you call them, houses are the concretisation of stories.

Yet, while Silvia’s voice infuses human history among the bricks of the Bar Centrale (Central Cafè), Cevo, a village in the Alpine Camonica valley, is disappearing. Houses are becoming sparse and depopulation is affievolving their voices, jeopardising the transmission of ancient knowledge. Therefore, enhancing the living voice of the inhabitants is a strong response to the silence of the villages — which is also the silence of the people — to recognise the human and historical weight of local communities. Moreover, silence prevents villages from presenting themselves as an alternative model for human settlement, inclusive and sustainable, in dialogue with the people and listening to the environment, in a present aware of the past and projected towards the future.

The Voice of Cevo is a sensory-based action-research project that gives voice to the inhabitants of Cevo through sound installations scattered on the walls of the village. Interactive plaques offer QR codes that trigger immersive sound compositions (hereinafter, ‘voices’) of the voices and sounds of Cevo and its inhabitants. The voices are collected by the author during a period of participant observation and are mixed using spatial audio for heaphones. In particular, each ‘voice’ narrates three fundamental passages: itself in relation to its own Cevo; a ‘personalised guide’ to the village from a very particular point of view; and finally, an ‘invitation’ to listen to Cevo and the valley.