This PhD project explores the under-examined potential of sound as a curatorial and narrative medium in the evolving context of online and immersive museums. As digital exhibitions continue to prioritise visual fidelity and interactivity, this research asks: what happens when we start designing exhibitions from the ear, not the eye?

Conducted across three research phases over three years, the study is built on ten practice-led experiments that examine how sound can help reconstruct, reframe, and reimagine historical spaces – particularly when physical access is lost, or when visual material is fragmented. Each phase builds upon the last, forming a progressive inquiry into how auditory strategies, sensory perception, and digital tools can be meaningfully integrated into virtual heritage environments.

From 3D scanning sound-rich environments to designing AI-generated regional voices, from developing ambisonic soundwalks in ruined abbeys to observing public responses to spatialised audio in VR, each project investigates a distinct angle of a central concern:

How does sound shape memory, spatial understanding, and cultural presence in digital heritage?

Rather than restoring history “as it was,” this project emphasises the constructed, interpretive, and affective dimensions of digital reconstruction. Drawing from cultural memory theory, sensory ethnography, and digital museology, it highlights how sound – when designed deliberately – can become a bridge between historical research, embodied experience, and narrative speculation.

This research contributes to multiple intersecting domains:

• In sound studies, it positions listening as a method of knowing, not just perceiving;

• In digital heritage, it redefines immersion as a multi-sensory, situated process;

• In practice-based methodology, it shows how tools such as smartphone LiDAR, AI-generated dialect, and participatory audio design can support low-cost, high-affect museum practices.

Ultimately, this study does not treat sound as an accessory to digital curation, but as a curatorial logic in itself – one that invites us to rethink how we build, share, and emotionally inhabit cultural memory in an increasingly virtual world.