V.AA. – Revista de Artes Sonoras y Cultura AURAL nº4

aural

Tsonami Arte Sonoro, ISSN: 0719-4625, Spanish, 68 pages, 2021, Chile

Tsonami Arte Sonoro is an excellent festival of sound art in Valparaiso, Chile (see Neural #45), which carries out a range of related activities including record production, radio broadcasts, artist residencies and publications. Among the latter is the magazine AURAL, whose fourth issue is dedicated to the theme “Otras Escuchas: el sonido en el mundo animal” (Other Listening: Sound in the animal world). With the same research-oriented attitude that guides the festival, the editors involve artists and writers to explore this subject. Francisco Lopez, Andres Burbano, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Valentina Montero, among others, address the perception of environmental sounds, bioacoustics, sound communication between different species, listening as a phenomenon from a non-human perspective and the description of animal sounds in the 19th century. The magazine is also sold in a special package with Audiomapa Vol. I, a CD compilation of the collaborative mapping platform of the same name that has published and archived field recordings focused on Latin America. This CD consists of bioacoustic recordings from the Peruvian, Brazilian and Ecuadorian Amazon by five authors, and all recordings document jungle environments without human presence. This is a remarkable example of a curated publication that emerged from the activities of a festival.