Introduction

Sound Threshold was established in 2007 by writer Daniela Cascella and curator Lucia Farinati, as a long-term research project which explores the relationships between site, sound and text.

Prompted by a shared background and interest in literature, experimental music, art history, and over a decade of experience in writing and in curating visual and sonic arts projects, Sound Threshold has been also the framework for the collaboration with musicians, artists, ecologists, writers, curators, archaeologists and scientists.

Since its outset, Sound Threshold has investigated the idea of threshold as an extended metaphor of boundary, frontier, track, border and difference as embodied by the Latin word limes – embracing an idea of landscape not only as a visual construct but also as a palimpsest of natural elements, literary references, acoustic phenomena.

The first phase of the research and production (season I) Music and Sound Through the Landscape (2007-08) was developed in response to the context of the alpine environment of Trentino and by collaborating with cultural and scientific organisations based in this area as well as with Manifesta 7.

The project took shape through practice, and through an intense exchange of views. Personal accounts and memories, collections of books and poetry, fragments of the past and views into new ideas: sound became also the sound of stories. We experienced landscape as mental, intimate, shared, literary space. Yet our focus has been the site of sound and its relation to the public realm.

The second phase of research, The Listening Project (Season II) was devised in spring 2009 in dialogues with many London based artists and organizations and further developed in consultation with a board of advisers in 2010-11.

Sound Threshold was co-directed by Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati till December 2010. From January 2011 the project has continued under the sole artistic direction of Lucia Farinati.