SONIC PLAYGROUND


Homegrown recognizes our Tijuana-San Diego border community as one rooted in many languages, sounds, movements, and landscapes. It is a community that sprawls from Oceanside to Rosarito, broadcasting multilingual messages through shared radio signals.  Sonic Playground (Recreo Sónico) was a 3-part cross-border workshop series where we invited people of all ages on both sides of the border to deep listen to the sounds of their surroundings, share sounds through radio waves via community radio, and play around with the possibilities of sound by using readily available materials to create new sonic landscapes. Learners explored the science of sound and audio production as a means of telling, owning, and exploring their own stories within our multidimensional borderlands. We offered both practical audio-production skills along with a platform to learn how to share, under the mentorship of local audio makers, so we might listen more closely to our shared yet separate audio waves.  

Sonic Playgrounds was an intergenerational program created and organized in collaboration with Tijuana-based youth, artists Ana Cossío García and Daniela Sandoval Argüelles (Surcarilita).




Day One | Cross-Border Mirror Soundwalk



 In the first part of our learning series, two groups were assembled in San Ysidro and in Tijuana to embark on a simultaneous, equidistant walk where we could hear the languages, sounds, movements, and landscapes using deep listening prompts as our guides.   As people walked further and further from the border, with their audio recorders they were asked to think about:


  • What’s a sound in your city that feels like it’s dancing?
  • What sound around you feels angry?
  • How many simultaneous sounds can you notice? 
  • Record a sound of people talking
  • Can you hear the sound of the border from where you are standing? 
  • Record when you feel you are one with the sound of the city


The walks ended with virtual reflection sessions where the two groups shared their recordings over a collective Facetime, reflecting on the sounds heard, the ways the sounds of our borders affect us, and opening space to imagine how we can deconstruct them.



Day Two | Community Through Radio





A week after our soundwalk, we gathered at Nettnett Radio in Tijuana for our second session, where we learned from Nettnett producers and artists from San Diego’s own community radio station, Particle FM, about independent audio distribution and DIY-pirate-radio platforms to explore how we can disrupt and make space for radical shared listening.  

In our bilingual workshop, we learned about the history of pirate radio and online community radio stations from Haydee Jimenez (Nettnett) and Christian Gonzalez (Particle) and tuned into radio shows around the world using headphone splitters and multiple laptops while asking ourselves what kinds of cross-border community can be built through collective listening platforms.

Finally, we workshopped and skillshared the many ways we can use sounds, tools, and our lived experiences to create our own radio shows.


Day Three | The Possibilities of Sound



The first two sessions were about listening to sounds and learning how to share them. Our last session was all about experimenting with and making sounds. We learned about DIY-music production through repurposing cheap items and everyday objects to create new sonic landscapes and make samples from these sounds.


By offering both practical audio-production skills along with a platform to listen,Sonic Playground provided a space to play around with the possibilities of sound so we might pay closer attention to our shared yet separate audio waves.

Many thank yous to Ana Cossío García, Daniela Sandoval Argüelles (Surcarilita), nettnett Radio, Particle.fm, Tijuana Performera, Laboratorio de Mutante, Kelechi Agwuncha, Mariela Torres, Jen Esparza, and Héctor Castro.  


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