Imagine a ‘book’ experience driven exclusively by your ears and your memory. This series proposes a new format of “audible book”. From the audible dimension, we expand the book experience without entering into any confrontation with other pre-existing historical models. In many cases, we ally with them.

From a strictly audible, memorable logic, we seek this strong cohesion – that ‘materiality’ characteristic of an object that deserves to be called a ‘book’. And, just like the book experience is physically much more than just a succession of booklets stitched together, the audiobook experience needs to go far beyond a succession of audio tracks that, purely utilitarianly, chapter by chapter, convert texts into voice…

This is where further critical elements come into play: acoustic 3D-ness, sound in high definition, hyper-realistic presence of the voice, various acoustic-spatial topologies (circular, lateralised, in fall, in elevation – each one giving rise to a particular design of audiobook), coherent temporal architectures (within each track, between tracks and as a whole), and the extended listening features capable of transcending the classic linear modes of visiting a book.

The 3D-audiobook can function as an audible layer superimposed on a pre-existing edition of the same work in print or electronic format: you can create an initial memory that somehow prepares or anticipates future readings in text. Conversely, it can also function as an audible resonance, a memory of texts already read. Beyond the old confrontations, beyond disruptions, our proposal falls into a general trend of confluence between the physical and the electronic, also between the textual and the oral.

From a literary creation standpoint, through collaborations with new authors, we deactivate old dichotomies between written culture and oral culture, suggesting a kind of continuum – a ‘flowing craftsmanship’ between the written and the spoken. Above all, we introduce new possibilities: there is a lot of life beyond the narrow “prestige circles” in traditional literary publishing.

As we understand it, this audible experience seems to run out of light in the middle of a room you already knew or even in a room you visit for the first time. Suddenly, you discover that you have ears –you hardly knew– and that your senses of orientation and memory must be readjusted. A certain disorientation is a poetic factor that we explore here. And, yes, the sudden absence of light generates the strong impression that you are alone and you have to “listen” alone. Every literary experience is necessarily an individual act. To think that it can be shared is probably a visual hallucination of the highest order…