Gallery Entry

Background Noise

By Francesca Cavazzoni · IT

Background Noise follows Laura, a widow who begins using an AI audio-restoration system on decades of family recordings after the death of her husband, Carlo. At first, the technology seems to offer exactly what she wants: his voice returned with a clarity the damaged recordings no longer possess. As Laura moves through birthdays, holidays, arguments, unfinished conversations and hours in which almost nothing happened, however, she becomes less interested in the moments that appear worth preserving and increasingly attentive to what surrounded them. The story uses AI restoration not as a metaphor added to the narrative, but as the mechanism through which Laura’s understanding of memory changes. A system designed to distinguish useful information from interference forces her to confront a distinction she had never needed to make while Carlo was alive. Background Noise is about grief, ordinary intimacy and the strange hierarchy through which we decide what deserves to be remembered. It asks what happens when a technology capable of making the past clearer also makes visible the difference between preserving information and preserving a life.

Category

WRITING

Approved

10 October 2026