The Ecosystems

Pacific Coast — Ensenada

Edge of the continent. Continuous surf, coastal wind, gray whale migration route, and migratory bird corridors. A priority marine region.

Sierra de San Pedro Mártir

Interior edge. A National Park since 1947. Dense silence, nocturnal fauna, presence of the California condor, and exceptional conditions for listening due to minimal light and noise pollution.

Gulf of California — San Felipe

Liminal edge between sea and desert. A territory of vast biological and acoustic diversity, where surf, wind, marine fauna, and desert landscape coexist.

PACIFIC COAST
ENSENADA

SIERRA SAN
PEDRO MARTIR

GULF OF CALIFORNIA
SAN FELIPE

Methodology

The working process follows a sequence that integrates phenomenological listening with quantitative analysis:

Extended listening → Soundwalk → Field recording (Zoom H5, WAV format, 24-bit/48 kHz) → ACI/ADI acoustic index analysis in RStudio → Electroacoustic composition with minimal intervention.

The numbers do not replace listening — they anchor it.

The acoustic indices reveal profound differences among the ecosystems: an ADI of 0.07 in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir indicates a landscape dominated by a single frequency band (dense silence punctuated by sporadic fauna), while the Gulf’s ADI of 1.18 reflects acoustic activity distributed across the full spectrum (surf, wind, marine and desert fauna occurring simultaneously).

Theoretical Framework

Three voices sustain this project.

R. Murray Schafer proposes that the soundscape is the imprint of the relationship between living beings and their environment. To listen to a territory is to read it: to measure its health, to recognize its memory.

Francisco López takes listening beyond representation. Sound does not merely reflect the world — it creates its own. Listening ceases to be a form of recording and becomes an autonomous experience.

Gilles Deleuze conceives of the edge not as a fixed line, but as a zone of transformation: the space where something ceases to be what it was and has not yet become what it will be. Difference, repetition, becoming.

In Listening to the Edges, these three perspectives converge: the soundscape as document, listening as experience, and the edge as the site where both transform one another. To listen to the territory is at once to know it, to inhabit it, and to activate its memory.

PACIFIC
ENSENADA

ACI 1,775

ADI 0.72

SIERRA SAN
PEDRO MARTIR

ACI 1,900

ADI 0.07

GULF
SAN FELIPE

ACI 1,951

ADI 1.18

Methodological note: The ACI and ADI indices are obtained by processing WAV recordings in RStudio using the soundecology package, which analyzes the spectrogram of each file. The ACI measures sonic complexity; the ADI measures the diversity of active frequency bands.

Why Now?

Some of these landscapes are fragile. If they are not documented now, there will be no basis for comparison to hear how they change in 10, 20, or 50 years. This sound archive proposes a form of territorial memory before the irreversible transformation of the environment.

About the Researcher

Maura Isabel Aguayo Alemán is a sound artist, researcher, and music educator. She holds a degree in Music from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) and has directed Rinforzando Música since 2017 — an independent platform for sound creation, research, and music education based in Mexicali, Baja California.

She has presented Listening to the Edges at the Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), as part of the Sound Art and Multimedia Program at CENDOART, as well as at the Second International Colloquium on Soundscape organized by the Ibero-American Network URBS SONORUM. Her work has been published by the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical (CENIDIM) of INBAL, the Italian journal THULE, RIO-LATIR of CIESAS, and Feminopraxis. Her research is currently under review for publication in the journal PRAGMA.