Sonic Ecologies: Ceramic Urban Echoes

LOW Estudio
COAR
Exhibition

“Sonic Ecologies: Ceramic Urban Echoes” is part of an ongoing body of research developed by LOW Estudio exploring the translation of sonic information into matter and public space. The project proposes a collection of urban ornamental objects whose geometry is generated from the city’s soundscape, transforming sound into texture, relief, and form through digital fabrication processes and 3D-printed ceramics.

The installation captures and physically transduces traditional street calls from Chilean popular culture: urban echoes that are progressively disappearing from contemporary life. Everyday trades and sounds such as knife sharpeners, mote con huesillo vendors, broom repairers, and other itinerant calls that once moved through and resonated across the city are here transformed into ceramic ornamental friezes.

Through digital fabrication technologies and processes of aesthetic transduction, the tonal variations, rhythms, and frequencies of these voices are materialized as ceramic surfaces, generating a collection of ornamental objects for urban space. The pieces create a temporary landscape for rest and encounter within the city, where architecture, memory, and soundscape converge into a collective sensory experience.

The project also explores the value of ceramics as one of the historical materials of architectural ornamentation: a medium capable of preserving narratives, symbols, and cultural memory over time. Just as friezes, reliefs, and architectural claddings have historically functioned as supports for storytelling, recording events, or representing collective imaginaries, “Sonic Ecologies: Ceramic Urban Echoes” proposes the use of contemporary digital fabrication technologies to inscribe sonic echoes and memories within architecture. The installation seeks to transform ephemeral acoustic heritage into lasting material presence, reintroducing fragments of urban history into the contemporary public realm.