La Memoria de los Muros

Multi-channel sound installation

30:58 min.

Curator: Alberto Ríos de la Rosa

The architecture has the capacity to generate sensitive spaces. Each space, in turn, generates a characteristic sound that we can perceive: a sonic character, a sonorous personality. Acoustic behavior reveals information about the dimensions and materials of the architecture; Is a property that allows us to distinguish a place. From the sound it is possible to appreciate the architecture in a different way, to experience it through the ears.

La memoria de los muros is a sound installation product of a study on the acoustics of Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, and the way the sound reacts to it. This work, carried out in July of 2016, seeks to sculpt a sonic architecture and discover the different ways in which sound reacts to the decisions and the will of its architect Tadao Ando.

The installation aims to appreciate the architecture from a sound perspective, understand its acoustic behavior and reveal the sonic and unique personality of the work. Orendain and Martínez Negrete use music and sound as instruments to measure and perceive the dimensions, materials and characteristics of the spaces that make up the architectural work. The sound installation is the product of a series of recordings that were manipulated, combined and converted into a sound representation of the space. Thanks to the sound it has been possible to appreciate the physical properties of the construction and to capture the acoustic experience that it has when inhabiting it.


Also, the artists worked with musicians from the region and with the human voice as one of the main instruments. In parallel, this project seeks to rescue and expose the sounds of the inhabitants of the southern state of Oaxaca, and in particular with the indigenous communities of Chatino village. The work presented is enriched with the sound of his language and his musical instruments, as well as accounts of his myths and his beliefs – this in order to share the social and geographical context surrounding Ando’s architecture. By including the voice in indigenous languages nd using instruments originating in Mexico, it seeks to continue with cultural ties and the formation of ethnographic documentation in the region. In the same way, their use as tools of expression in contemporary art is encouraged.


As a contribution to the preservation and diffusion of cultural diversity in Mexico, Orendain and Martínez Negrete have generated a sound document that contains a record of the traditional music of these indigenous peoples, which corresponds to a unique historical, social and cultural moment. These ethnomusicological recordings have been donated to the Casa Wabi Foundation, the National Fonoteca and the National Center for Research, Documentation and Music Information.

La memoria de los muros is part of the Casa Wabi – Santa María exhibition program, a platform for artist’s development, whose first year deals with the different aesthetic, spatial and discursive relations of the invited artists with Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.