Cuyama Valley Sound Map - Embedded & Interactive, Blue Sky Center, New Cuyama, California, 2023

In the spring of 2023, I was the Community Action Fellow at Blue Sky Center in New Cuyama, California, a community of six hundred people in southern California. Over half of its population is ethnically Hispanic and comprised of families in which one or both parents are migrant laborers working in agriculture. In New Cuyama, I conducted sound workshops exploring listening practices and field recording techniques for mobile phones at Cuyama Elementary School, Cuyama Valley High School, with local adults, and with the grassroots land-stewarding organization Jardínes Victoria (Victory Gardens). As a first-generation and bilingual artist, the son of Colombian immigrants, my goal included providing a context for the Cuyama Valley students and surrounding community to author and uncover previously unlinked sonic territories independent of commercial or socio-political interests. Teaching myself a free and open-source mapping software during the fellowship, I concluded the fellowship by publishing an online and interactive sound-map whose sounds were populated by audio recordings the community made on their phones.

Detail: On the map embedded at the top of this page, dots are clickable and will reveal a sound player as well as a corresponding descriptive text. In the upper left of the map, under the zoom feature (+ and – sign), is a button for “see data layers.” Clicking “see data layers” will reveal a scrollable box on the left side with community members listed as groups. This box can be scrolled upwards and downwards. Clicking “browse data” at the bottom of this box will reveal a new box on the right side of the screen with community members grouped by color and group names. Clicking “About” on the upper right side of this box will reveal further details on each group with their corresponding color. Community member privacy and anonymity were respected whenever requested.

Below are images captured from the map.