JUAN PABLO CULASSO
Juan Pablo is from Uruguay and is 27 years old. He was born blind - which as he puts it, while laughing, means he was ‘badly designed’. When he was a child, as a game, his father would play an encyclopaedia of bird songs from the computer in order for him to memorize them.
Incidentally, it was through this game that he came to realise his great ability to remember and identify the sounds of the birds. For 8 years, from the age of 4, he started to study the piano, something which helped his develop his hearing almost to the point of being pitch perfect. This pitch perfect hearing allows all types of sound, musical notes and differences between these to be recognised and distinguished.
He constantly uses his musical training, for example in order to remember people’s voices. The perfect pitch hearing allows a lot of various types of information to be recorded, not only of birds.
In Uruguay, at the age of 15, he was invited to a camping expedition to film birds. From the first moment he used the professional recorder (with very few instructions) he felt the sensation that it was something he had been doing forever, something that came very naturally to him and from that moment on he never strayed far from birds.
By the age of 19 he moved to Brazil with his parents in search of better opportunities to study. He soon offered to work, without a salary, for the biggest laboratory in Latin America - The Neotropical Archive of Sound.
In 2008 he purchased his first mid to high-end recording equipment and, using his own recordings, published his first CD in 2010 (Songs of Birds from the marshes of Mata Atlántica) – two CDs with 62 species of birds on each. In 2012 he moves on from the sound of birds to the sound of landscapes in order to grasp ‘what happens in the moment’.
He specializes in Biophony (sounds that stem from animals) Geophony (sounds that stem from the land) and Antropophony (sounds with human interference), combining the three in order to obtain a real grasp of nature. The aim of recording the sounds landscapes is so that people learn to feel and connect with their surroundings.
“Recordings are made in order to preserve. One does not preserve what one does not know. If one does not know, it is destroyed; in this way a consciousness for preservation is generated. This preservation allows the future generations to have a legacy, heritage and a sonorous inheritance. Recordings are also made for scientific use”.
Juan Pablo is openly excited when he comes across a new, rare sound, he maintains that “every day is a blank canvas and nature is the artist”.
“There aren’t many people who do this exclusively, the majority are photographers but there are few who really dedicate their time to recording sounds in the countryside. For this reason it is an activity which has allowed me to give conferences and workshops on the subject matter...”
In 2014, Juan Pablo launched his third CD (received with much national acclaim). It is a collection of birds from Brazil, titled Collection of Invisible Sounds. In February he won the National Geographic programme Super Brains.
“I’m not sure if I’m a romantic, a dreamer or an artist. The only thing I’m certain of is that I’m a passionate person who searches for perfection in every project I embark on”.
RONJA
Ronja is a female Labrador who is 7 years old and has accompanied Juan Pablo since 2009. They have a bond which is difficult to put into words but the following some to mind; companionship, cooperation, bond, happiness, fraternity, strength, friendship, respect, admiration and love.
She becomes Juan Pablo’s eyes when they are walking and is always there. They look after each other equally, Ronja warns him of danger and Juan never puts her in risky situations. He will not be taking her to the Amazon, for example, as he prefers to leave her in the city of Medellin in order to avoid her getting hurt by an animal or the jungle.
He does not expose her to dangers out of his control but apart from the before mentioned she will accompany our protagonist throughout his journey. For Juan Pablo Ronja’s arrival in his life has made him more sociable and confident in himself. Before, many people pitied him when they saw him walking with a cane but now they approach him with respect and affection and ask him about his guide dog.
“Ronja is amazing. She is sociable, affectionate, unconditional and perfect. She is all of these things. She is a super hero. I would give my life for hers and I know she would give her life for mine.”