By Bastian Díaz Jeréz
This project is situated within the context of planetary-scale infrastructural transformations affecting numerous coastal cities, using San Antonio Bay, Chile—where the Maipo River meets the Pacific Ocean as a global hub for goods and data, with irreversible ecological consequences—as a case study.
The work begins with a critique of the extractive logic of these infrastructures, drawing on the Bolivian philosopher Juan José Bautista, who links modern civilizational harm to the objectification of nature and equates the traditional scientific method with a form of coercion exerted on phenomena to extract data. In response to this instrumental rationality, the project proposes a methodological alternative based on “expanded listening,” a concept that engages with David Toop’s ideas about fragile and intrusive sounds, and with the literacy of the future as a framework in which listening precedes human imagination.
Based on this approach, an exercise in listening to the territory—wetlands, birds, electromagnetic frequencies—is developed using sensitive infrastructure: antennas and FM transmitters. The main recording took place on March 9, 2026, at five locations in the Maipo River wetland in Chile, where acoustic anomalies and a co-presence of electromagnetic signals and water movement were activated, revealing previously inaudible connections between the river, the ocean, and the local fauna.
As Santiago (2020) argues, “we contribute to future studies with sensitive infrastructures that enable new forms of empathy, attention, and coexistence with non-human organisms and phenomena through sound and attentive listening. Sound ‘observes’ or materializes ongoing change due to its processual nature, unlike a static recording.
Practicing our listening is a way to create possible futures.” In this sense, the project proposes expanded listening as a situated practice of futures literacy (Miller, 2018), highlighting the limitations of dominant approaches in incorporating bodily and more-than-human signals without subjecting them to the coercive format of data. Finally, it proposes the restoration of wetlands through alternative methodologies and poses the central question: What infrastructures would allow us to listen to the planet rather than interrogate it?
References and acknowledgments:
Bautista, J. J. (2012a). Toward the Decolonization of Latin American Social Science. Rincón Ediciones.
Comsom, B. (2026). Constelar Antenas (Workshop). Atmosférica XVIII Tsonami International Sound Art Festival
Gumbs, A. (2020). *Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals*. AK Press
Mario de Vega, Victor Mazon Gardoqui, Daniela Silvestrin (2016). LIMEN. Ecologies of Transmission. Editorial Enhe
Miller, R. (Ed.). (2018). Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351048002
Murch, W. (2001). In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing. Silman-James Press
Santiago, L (2020) Futures Soundscapes from Mexico City. Journal of Future Studies Perspectives. https://jfsdigital.org/2020/06/29/futures-soundscapes-from-mexico-city/
Toop, D. (2004). Sinister Resonance: The Listener as Medium. Translated by Valeria Meiller, Caja Negra Publishing
