This Month on Live Culture: Catching up with VozTerra

This month on Live Culture, Martha is in discussion with two members of VozTerra, an experimental sound project based in Bogotá, Colombia, which addresses the climate crisis, social justice issues, and the effects of Covid lockdown through innovative collaborative audio recordings mixing ambient noises and music. Much of it incorporates sounds of nature from the threatened and environmentally rich Van der Hammen Reserve, while the Sounds From Your Window project offers a global interactive aural glimpse of life during the lockdown.

VozTerra is an audio project created with the purpose of raising awareness about the care of our natural ecosystems, and to open up new experiences for listening, in dialogue with global communities. VozTerra is a proud recipient of the Latinoamerica Verde Awards and features an excellent website full of audio meditations, videos, sounds, music and ways to participate and get involved. You may listen to more here: https://www.vozterra.com/

The music albums Ventanas Volume 1, Ventanas, Volume 2, and Alteraciones, and Reserva, all from 2021, are now available on most major sound platforms for listening, with sale proceeds going to the artists who donated their talents to this project as well as an ecological tree planting initiative, and a fund to support older musicians living on the margins. There is also a wonderful video, an official selection from the AXD Short Film Festival about the Sounds from Your Windows project is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uguCxdUD_WE

VozTerra was created in November, 2019 by Lany Arévalo, Héctor Buitrago, Rafael Puyana, Diana Restrepo, and Daniel Roa, who, in collaboration with The Museum for the United Nations - UN Live, developed the multimedia web platform for this innovative and timely project. Don’t miss this conversation with two of the VozTerra Collective: Rafael Puyana and Diana Restrepo as we meet on Zoom from Sweden, Hong Kong, and Bogotá to discuss art, social justice, and the climate crisis during the time of Covid. This is environmental activism at its most creative, compelling, and inclusive. More about the The Museum for the United Nations - UN Live here: https://museumfortheun.org/about/

Diana Maria Restrepo is a distinguished sound artist and performer. She graduated in percussion from the Paris Conservatoire and did her Masters's studies at the Sound Studies Program of the University of Arts, Berlin. Her artistic concerns point towards personal and collective memory as plastic matter and its relation to sound. She has worked in soundscape, radio, audio design, and installation. She has extensive experience managing and curating artistic and cultural projects. More about Diana can be found at www.dianarestrepo.co

Rafael Puyana is a media artist, designer, interactive creative director, educator, and live coder. He has been exploring the intersections between art, design and technology in the digital landscape for around 15 years, for projects and companies in Colombia, Canada, United States, and Mexico. He currently supports companies and special projects with the crystallization of their ideas into prototypes and digital tangible products: applications, mobile, web, installations, and AR/VR. More about Rafael can be found at: www.rafaelpuyana.com

Now in it's 5th Year, Live Culture is a monthly radio program about art, ideas and visual culture. For 2021 Martha has largely been focusing on art addressing the Climate Crisis and issues of Social Justice during the time of Covid.