In SEPHIROT® INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE, sound plays a crucial role. It links the mechanics to the narrative, the interface to the memory; it has the power to suggest mystery, urgency, surprise, even before anything has changed visually. Fabio D’Onofrio, composer and sound designer, is our Director of Music!

SEPHIROT® INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE was created to revolutionise the way we interact with culture and corporate welfare. The project embraces virtual reality to transform museum visits and educational tours into immersive, engaging and customisable experiences. But also to incentivise participation, wellbeing and alignment with company policies for its employees!

Since 2019, Fabio D’Onofrio has been in charge of creating the entire sound identity of the SEPHIROT® system. In this interview, we explore Fabio’s influences, the invisible rules of interactive music and how the body listens differently when in virtual reality. Enjoy the interview!

Let’s start with the usual game of our CHRONversations! Imagine being the main character of an RPG, fully customisable by name, appearance, goals, attitude and special abilities. Can you let us know Fabio better through this double of his?

I would imagine myself to be a kind of alchemist wizard, with the appearance of a hermit outside the dimensionality of the modern world and placed in a kind of Egyptian temple in which there are portals to otherworldly dimensions.

He would have an apparently meditative attitude, but would be ready to explode when action calls. His goal would be to connect all the dimensionalities he can visit through these portals to create a single universe. On names, I’ve never been good, Ermete would come to mind, but it’s very obvious for this kind of context.

You have composed for Eliogabalo, Fabularum, Marino, Montagues and Capulets… SEPHIROT® exists in different forms and versions. How do you deal with sound coherence in an ever-changing system?

Sonic coherence is a factor to which I relate almost obsessively. It is very important for any work to try to delve into the philological aspect of timbres, and no matter how eclectic a musician may be, he has to make choices in the gigantic sonic palette that modern music offers him.

So it becomes even more difficult to draw options that have an underlying motivation without being random or generic. To put it in more practical terms: one of my first steps is to create an identifying timbre, consciously, by reusing it on several tracks, a sound that then characterises the scenario, a character or an emotional state and is then scattered around the work within compositions, even with a different musical nature.

What was the biggest challenge to manage when creating themes and sounds for an interactive virtual reality experience?

To relate to the previous question, the biggest challenge is to manage the coherence of the musical events, but at the same time, within them, to create a dynamism, something that can be both coherent but also surprising to avoid potential monotony.

Was there a theme among those you created for SEPHIROT® INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE that surprised even you?

Without a doubt, the “Fresh Wine Hot Wine” challenge. When I jot down ideas once they have a concreteness, I leave them there as if they were stalled in my mind; I return to them the next day to gather the effect they have on me. As soon as I reopened this piece, I burst out laughing.

We always like to greet our guests with the same question! If you could collaborate with another artist (living or not) in the field of music or sound composition, who would it be and why? What would you create together?

Of contemporary musical figures, I would love to collaborate with Johnny Greenwood, known for being the guitarist of Radiohead. I find him to be one of the most important sonic visionaries of recent decades. In particular, in some of his soundtracks, he has blazed some very peculiar trails. Besides him, there is also Hildur Gudnadottir, who is a great artist and for me a reference for timbre manipulation and the use of spaces and suspensions in music.

Second image: Still frame from the teaser video of MARINO Backstage, directed by Julian Soardi.