SILENCE.
How do you convey silence — through sound?
It sounds like a contradiction. And that is precisely why SILENCE is such an extraordinary museum project.
At the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris, the focus is not on sound, but on its absence. The exhibition poses a simple yet profoundly philosophical question: Where do we find silence — and how do we experience it? Rather than providing answers, it makes visitors themselves the measure of their own perception. Every step alters the auditory experience. Each room offers a new perspective on the relationship between sound and silence. Around 130,000 visitors have had this experience.
To achieve this, we integrated 150 usomo audio systems across an area of around 600 square metres. The result is not a traditional sound installation, but a spatial composition: sounds, soundscapes and deliberately crafted moments of silence form the actual content of the exhibition. It is not the exhibits that guide visitors through the exhibition — sound itself becomes the dramaturgy.
The exhibition was originally developed by the Museum of Communication in Bern and adapted for Paris — winning the Red Dot Best of the Best, the iF Design Award, BrandEx Gold and the International Sound Award.
The response shows that this approach works. Le Monde ranks SILENCE amongst the season’s must-see scientific exhibitions. Radio Nova describes the tour as an immersive sound journey in which visitors become the “conductors of their own visit” through their own movements.
„Une expérience sonore immersive, de laquelle on ressort avec un sentiment de quiétude.” “An immersive sound experience from which one emerges with a sense of tranquillity.” — Visitor, L’Officiel des Spectacles
SILENCE exemplifies how usomo views sound not as a supplement to an exhibition, but as a medium in its own right — for conveying knowledge, for experience, for perception. Sometimes it is that which we do not hear telling the most compelling story.
