The temporary exhibit Sound and Dancers explores the relationship between ritual and sound universes in the pre-Columbian world, through their sound production and creation technologies, as well as through dance as a field of expression of sound in the past. The exhibition seeks to transcend the perception of the archaeological space as silent and static, and allow us to think of the pre-Columbian worlds as places in constant movement, charged with a deep creative sense.

The body and sound world in the pre-Columbian time is experienced throughout the three temporary rooms of the museum. The first one approaches the production of sounds from the perspective of technologies and diversity of forms in archaeological artifacts such as whistle bottles, pututos, rattles, bells, flutes, ocarinas and lithophones; displayed along with their original recordings.

Since the internal mechanisms of the pieces are as fascinating as their external characteristics, the second room allows visitors to appreciate the intimate world of these sound artifacts by the visualization of 3D computerized tomography. The third room of the exhibition is dedicated to pre-Columbian dancers, capable of carrying and producing sound (through ornaments and instruments), and puts them in dialogue with ethnographic objects of celebrations and rituals of contemporary Ecuador. 

The enhancement of Ecuador’s archaeological and sound heritage will allow the visitor to live a contemplative and sensory experience around the sound and corporeality of the past, but in dialogue with our diverse identities in the present.