Former Beatle consort Yoko Ono, avantgarde icon Joseph Beuys and American composer John Cage are among artists whose works have gone on display in Milan for a new exhibition exploring the concept of noise.
Wails, thumps, whispers and silences are the themes running through 21 installations and performance art videos on display at the city's Spazio Oberdan.
The show was first seen in Watou, Belgium, last summer, where it was hailed by the national press as the best exhibition of the year.
''The dimension of sound is an absolute constant in our daily routines: we wander around with iPods stuck in our ears and cell phones glued to our cheeks,'' said Flemish curator Gwy Mandelinck, explaining his desire to showcase visual art which has a strong audio component.
''We want to exploit eyes and ears to the max,'' he added.
Among the loudest works on show is A Laugh Will Bury You (2005) by Italian Lara Favaretto, where a small resin box sitting on the floor emits a pealing, interminable laugh.
In Stoning The Refrigerator (1996), American artist Jimmie Durham throws stones at a white fridge until he eventually destroys it in a comment on the constant presence of consumerism in modern society.
But a significant number of works on display explore the concept of silence.
''The negation of sound can be just as fascinating,'' Mandelinck explained.
The late German artist Beuys stars in Coyote - the video of a 1974 performance in which he spent three days in a cage with a wild coyote at a New York gallery. The coyote eventually accepts the artist's presence and a silent communication builds up between the pair.
Cage's installation, Please Play (1989), is an upturned piano resting on a thick layer of heavy coloured mats which drown out the sound if a gallery-goer takes the invitation in the title seriously.
A 2005 video by the Romanian artist Mircea Cantor places a live wolf and a deer visibly pulsating with fear in a white-walled room and leaves them to it. But the wolf does not attack, and the bewildered animals instead remain in complete silence, circling the white room and seeming to communicate with glances and the way they keep a respectful distance from each other.
Japanese artist Ono presents We Are All Water (2006) - a series of 118 jars half-full of water each labelled with the name of a famous historic person, the idea being that - influential or not - everyone evaporates sooner or later.
Noise - A Hole in Silence runs at the Spazio Oberdan in Milan until 25 May.
