Sonic Ecologies
Exhibition
Design brief:
To create a speculative and interactive exhibition that uses design fiction and worldbuilding to critique the human-nature-technology relationship
Process:
speculative fiction, inquiry based approach, design research
Sonic Ecologies is a radical rethinking of how sound can be used both as a design medium to create spaces and experiences that help in dialogue creation, but also as an alternate method of archiving histories.
The exhibition functions simultaneously as a site of exploration and critique, questioning the dominance and overreliance of technology in human experiences while juxtaposing it against organic, nature-driven interactions. In doing so, it creates a contemplative space for dialogue and introspection where the audience critically examines the complex Entanglement of Human, Nature, and Technology, unpacking how these interconnected forces continuously influence, transform, and redefine one another.
Situated within the broader context of immersive and speculative media, the work acts as both a critique and a proposition, moving beyond passive observation and consumption toward embodied, multi-sensory engagement. It positions sound and the act of listening as a political, ecological, and cultural act, advocating for new modes of embodied archiving that centre non-human voices in an anthropocentric world.
This exhibition presents an assemblage of speculative listening technologies, instruments, and fragments recovered from or inspired by these archives. They do not function as tools of control, but as resonant mediators, reactive to touch. Each object forms part of a distributed archive: a living network of sonic memory systems entangled with climate, infrastructure, and extinction. What remains is not a complete record, but a fractured, Shifting, Partial resonance that keeps evolving.
The exhibition presents a collection of speculative artifacts that use design fiction and worldbuilding to imagine a future set in the year 2075, where ecological collapse has caused humans to lose touch with non-human voices. These artifacts function as narrative devices, telling the story of the social, environmental, and technological developments that unfolded over the preceding decades and led to the present moment of the exhibition. Through a combination of images, interactive installations, and fictional materials such as newspapers and object-based stories, the exhibition immerses visitors in this imagined future, encouraging them to piece together its history and implications.
The central installation to this exhibition would be the ' Sonic Archive'
Click here to see process and images
