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Paper short abstract:

Captured in Flores, Azores most-western island and UNESCO Biosphere reserve, this soundscape interrogates the meanings and imaginaries of conservation areas. The piece depicts the encounters and frictions between tourists, ethnographer, and non-humans in one "natural" heritage site.

Paper long abstract:

The first minutes of this soundscape account essentially for the biophonies and geophonies between Lagoa Funda and Lagoa Rasa, a Natural Heritage Site in Flores island. Unidentified birds, flies and seagulls, the sea at a distance, the wind, a storm in the horizon, a pick-up loaded with cows that suddenly traverses such sonic environment, as well as other inaudible, undisclosed, perhaps otherworldly sounds, constitute the first part of this macro-cosmic composition. Then, three vans loaded with some 30 tourists bring a set of anthrophonies (engines, mechanic doors, photo camera clicks, noises from cookie packs, small talk) that gradually muffle the previous "natural" symphony.

Considerations related to what could be heard in that geography are triggered by my presence. Had they visited this site to hear the birds they did not allow to be heard? What one hears is related to what one believes should be heard, as well as what one thinks about the nature of sounds — be them voices, birds (migratory and otherwise), if not the very "nature" (cf. Helmreich 2015). Soundscapes can be defined as the "totality of all sounds within a location with an emphasis in the relationship between individual's or society's perception of, understanding of and interaction with the sonic environment" (Payne et al 2009). "Those white spots are birds" therefore interrogates the extent to which bio-, geo- and anthrophonies are part and parcel of the ecological acoustics of conservation places as well as the (im)possibilities of a shared (sonic) universe.