"Col Legno"

Year: 2022–2023

Type / context: Interactive audio installation for museum exhibition, using capacitive proximity sensing and vibrating panels as distributed loudspeakers, created as an introductory, participatory sound piece for the exhibition on prehistoric life around Lago di Fimon.

Partners, institutions and production:

• Commission: Musei Civici di Vicenza / Museo Naturalistico Archeologico, for the exhibition “Palafitte e piroghe del Lago di Fimon. Legno, territorio, archeologia”.

• Exhibition context: prehistoric life on the shores of Lago di Fimon, pile dwellings, monoxyl boats and the relationship between humans, wood and the lacustrine environment.

• Visual / graphic design: Marianna Anoardi.

Role:

• Andrea Santini – concept, interaction design and sound design: design of the interactive system based on capacitive proximity sensors embedded in printed cardboard panels, integration of sound exciters so that the panels themselves act as loudspeakers, composition and spatial distribution of sound materials linked to the lake soundscape and imagined prehistoric life on Lago di Fimon.

Short description:
“Col Legno” is an interactive installation built from large printed cardboard panels equipped with capacitive proximity sensors and sound exciters, so that the panels both sense and emit sound. The sonic materials belong to the soundscape of Lago di Fimon and to an imagined acoustic memory of prehistoric life on the lake—water, birds, wind, work, settlement—recomposed into layers that visitors activate by approaching or touching different graphic areas. As they move through the installation, audiences collectively reconstruct the lake’s acoustic environment in a participatory way before entering the archaeological exhibition on pile‑dwellings and monoxyl boats. The vibrating panels create an enveloping, diffuse sound field very different from traditional loudspeakers, turning the cardboard surfaces themselves into a distributed acoustic body and echoing the exhibition’s focus on wood, structures and resonance around the lake