Murale Panoramico Vibrante Sonoro is one of the few example's of Soto's mural pieces and, as such, is very rare. Rarer still, it is an example of the Murale Sonoro, an active work with a sound element.
This mural is unique in its actual construction, the exploration of movement and vibration together with the involvement of the viewer, and the way he designed he mural to be part of the architecture. What sets this mural apart from all the others and makes it so special is that when this mural is touched, the vibrations of the metal rods become sound, and the piece becomes a sonorous work. It is also extremely unusual in the fact that there is existing footage of Soto 'playing' the work. This demonstrates his intention for the work to encourage both interaction and for the piece to be treated as a dynamic sculpture.
As Soto himself says in the accompanying film:
"Contemporary art is the art of participation.
All men contribute to the artistic creation at the same time that the artist produces it."
In an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2005, Soto recalled the importance of music to his early production: "In those years, I was trying to find ways to achieve true abstraction. To begin with, what I had to do was, of course, to completely dissociate drawing from its traditional function of representing everyday reality. So I thought of music, where the notes don't represent anything, but in fact constitute a system of unlimited relationships invented by man. In the same way, in order to achieve abstraction, I thought it was important to ind a graphic system that would allow me to codify a reality rather than represent it." His interest in music was also as a musician; for more than a decade Soto earned his living by playing guitar at bars.