Maura Alemán — Sound Artist in Baja California

Maura Alemán is a sound artist, musician, and independent researcher based in Mexicali, Baja California. Her practice integrates sound art, acoustic ecology, field recording, and territorial memory as forms of embodied knowledge of landscape and place.

Working from Rinforzando Música, she develops a practice situated at the intersection of research-creation, electroacoustic composition, and contemporary sound art. Her central project, Escuchando los Bordes (Listening to the Borders), explores the sonic ecosystems of Baja California and Mexico as living forms of memory and acoustic presence.

Her work has been published and presented at institutions including CECUT/Cendoart, UABC, the Fonoteca Nacional, UNAM, and the Red URBS SONORUM, and has been featured in academic publications in Mexico and Italy.

Escuchando los Bordes —
Sound Art from Baja California

Escuchando los Bordes (Listening to the Borders) is Maura Alemán’s sound art project. Through field recordings, soundscapes, sound walks, and active listening, the project explores the sounds of Baja California and Mexico as a mode of engaging with territory.

Borders are understood not merely as geographic limits, but as zones of change, transition, and encounter: the border between sea and land, between city and desert, between noise and silence, between memory and the present.

The project does not seek solely to document sounds. Rather, it proposes listening experiences that make perceptible the acoustic memory, atmospheres, silences, tensions, and forms of life specific to each place. Each piece functions both as an acoustic document and as an aesthetic experience of situated listening.

What does Maura Alemán do as a sound artist?

Maura Alemán’s practice as a sound artist brings together interrelated disciplines in which sound operates as artistic material, as living archive, and as a tool for territorial knowledge.

• Sound art and phonography

• Soundscape composition and acoustic ecology

• Field recording and sound archive

• Sound walks and active listening

• Electroacoustic composition from the territory

• Acoustic memory and territorial memory

• Research-creation

Publications:

• PRAGMA, Vol. 04, No. 08 (2026) — Peer-reviewed article on acoustic ecology and Baja California

• CENIDIM/INBAL — Research on pre-Hispanic instruments (tecciztli)

• Revista Thule, Italy — International academic publication

• RIO-LATIR/CIESAS — Feminist pedagogy and musical practice

• Feminopraxis — Feminist pedagogy and musical practice

Presentations and Institutional Affiliations:

• CECUT / Cendoart, Tijuana — Presentation of Escuchando los Bordes (2026)

• Fonoteca Nacional — Field recordings deposited under comodato agreement

• IV Congress of Ethnomusicology, FaM-UNAM

• Mapa Sonoro de México — Registered under #EscuchandoLosBordes (coord. Bruno Bartra)

• Red Nacional de Audiotecas — Participant at inaugural event (2026)

Sound Art in Baja California

Maura Alemán’s artistic practice is grounded primarily in Baja California, a territory defined by stark contrasts: desert, mountain range, coastline, border, city, and sea. From this geographically and sensorially charged context, Escuchando los Bordes proposes listening to Baja California beyond its visual image.

The project attends to the natural, urban, and territorial sounds that reveal how a place changes and how we come to relate to it. Baja California emerges as a living sonic territory: a space where desert, sea, sierra, and border generate distinct forms of acoustic memory and presence.

PACIFIC
ENSENADA

Coastal soundscape recorded at Playa El Vigía, Ensenada. The piece captures the sonic texture of the Pacific shoreline: wave surge, wind, and the acoustic boundary between land and sea.

SIERRA SAN
PEDRO MARTIR

Field recording from the Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park, Baja California. A high-altitude pine forest soundscape marked by biophony and near-total absence of anthropophony

GULF
SAN FELIPE

Recorded at Km 43, San Felipe, on the Gulf of California coast. The piece explores the sonic contrasts of the desert meeting the sea: tidal movement, wind across salt flats, and the sparse acoustic ecology of the Sonoran Desert coastline.