Design Map · Eindhoven
Mucho Ruido Y Pocas Nueces (Mucho Ado About Nothing)
Graduation project by Justina Volpe at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Upon approach, an interactive installation of ceramic sculptures translates visitors’ proximity into boisterous sound. Combining the call of the erquencho, an indigenous wind instrument from northern Argentina, with the roar of a chainsaw, a symbol adopted by the Argentine political far-right, Justina Volpe researches how sound builds authority. Both objects have been utilised for collective mobilisation. From the erquencho's use for communal signalling among the Diaguita people to the chainsaw's viral political spectacle. This dissonance is cast into a series of ceramic objects merging the shapes of the wind instrument and the sawing tool. The earth-like materiality of the clay lends itself to an ambiguous appearance suspended between past and present. Tracing how sonorities shape persuasion, as multiple visitors move around, their combined positions generate collective compositions where compromise becomes a creative mechanism. Visitors can cooperatively negotiate what they hear, yet what they believe is entirely at their own personal discretion.