Tuning into Sensitivity: VoiceLAB’s Journey Through the Viable Unknowns

In a world increasingly shaped by noise ‒ both literal and metaphorical ‒ what does it mean to listen deeply? To be present, not only with one another but with the city, the land, and the invisible patterns that hold us together?

As partners in the Creative Europe project Viable Unknowns, VoiceLAB steps into these questions with the tools closest to our breath ‒ voice, sound, and listening.

The Viable Unknowns project draws inspiration from the pedagogical vision of Paulo Freire, who proposed that education which fosters critical and independent thinking is a path to liberation. Freire believed that such growth ‒ pedagogical, human, scientific, and social ‒ emerges from a deep desire to know and to become more. In the words of John Dewey, education as seen by Freire is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.” This belief forms a conceptual backbone of our approach to Viable Unknowns, where learning and listening are central to imagining new ways of coexistence.

The project as a whole asks: What must we do to live together in our cities, in the face of environmental collapse, global migration, and economic instability? What are we failing to perceive ‒ not because the answers are absent, but because our ways of sensing have gone numb?

This is where our work begins.

The performance (in development)

The shape of our performance grows at the intersection of the Viable Unknowns project’s theme ‒ sustainable and inclusive coexistence in the city ‒ and the aesthetic and philosophical foundations of VoiceLAB. Our process is rooted in simplicity, stillness, and shared presence.

We build experiences that are calm, spacious, and modest ‒ aligned with the values of acoustic ecology, where listening becomes an ethical act. We attend to the sounds of our environment not only for beauty, but to understand how human and non-human voices cohabit space. What sounds do we privilege? What sounds do we erase? In this awareness lies the beginning of responsibility.

In our works, we don’t aim to overwhelm the senses but to tune them ‒ gently calibrating the nervous systems of both performers and audience. Everything we create stems from something fundamentally human: being in the same room, sharing the air, exchanging impressions, memories, fragments of language and breath. After all, this mutual presence is the foundation of coexistence.

Sensitivity as Strength

At VoiceLAB, we believe that sensitivity is not a weakness, but our greatest strength. The more finely tuned we are to each other’s voices, to the subtle changes in soundscapes that surround us, to the stories hidden in the silence, the better we are equipped to respond, both to each other and to the world.

The performance we are working on within the Viable Unknowns project is built on this premise. Through improvisation in music and text, and in collaboration with a group of singers and performers, we are crafting a piece that speaks from (and to) the senses. Vocal textures become ecosystems. Shifts in the fabric of music and sound echo social changes in the outside world. The human voice becomes a vessel of memory, hope, and collective transformation.

Terzani and the Revolution Within

This vision of inner transformation ‒ of turning inward not to escape the world, but to meet it more clearly- finds deep resonance in the writings of Tiziano Terzani. His books ‒ A Fortune Teller Told Me, The End is My Beginning, One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round, and Letters Against the War ‒ offer a compassionate, radically introspective lens on the crises of our times.

Collected and illuminated by Gloria Germani in Tiziano Terzani: la rivoluzione dentro di noi (The Revolution Inside of Us), his ideas speak to the same truth that Freire had touched on: that the seeds of social change lie within. In reading Terzani we see that if we wish to transform the world, we must first sharpen our perception, deepen our stillness, and recover the lost art of listening.

This “revolution inside”, as Germani has coined it, is not about answers from outside. It is about recognizing that the answers are already within us, obscured by noise, fear, and distraction. Our task is to become sensitive enough to hear them again.

In this way, Terzani and Freire together inform our performance: an acoustic space where knowledge doesn’t shout, but hums ‒ quiet, human, and deeply shared.

Listening to the Urban Soul

A key part of our process involves interviewing people in our urban surroundings: gathering not just stories, but resonances. These intimate encounters will be distilled into short poetic texts and woven into the performance: whispers from the city’s subconscious, testaments to lived experience. Each voice is a thread in the collective fabric.

This summer, our exploration continues. We will walk the streets with open ears, listen to strangers with open hearts, and experiment with improvisation as a form of research. In doing so, we’re not just creating art. We are practicing coexistence.

The Viable Unknown

To embrace the “viable unknown” is to step into the future with curiosity instead of fear. It means that any future holds a potential of harmony and coexistence. 

In our sound-based work, we do not impose meaning: rather, we invite it. We create spaces where performers and audiences alike can feel their way toward understanding. Our city is changing. Our climate is shifting. But the possibility of harmony still exists ‒ in every breath, in every note, in every act of care.

Let us begin there.