In this section you will find a selection of written, audiovisual, radio and podcast reports about my work and projects. Go ahead, explore and learn more about my work!
El uruguayo Juan Pablo Culasso utiliza su oído absoluto para capturar los sonidos del mundo y promover la inclusión de las personas ciegas en experiencias naturales
Observador de aves ciego lanza la primera audioguía temática grabada 100% en Uruguay
Recorrió el país y advierte sobre el deterioro de la naturaleza. “Las aves son excelentes bioindicadores de la salud de un ecosistema”.
Juan Pablo Culasso, a birding guide and consultant, has never actually seen a bird. Nonetheless, when standing next to a group of birders who are peering into the trees through binoculars, he'll be the first to identify a species and point to where the bird is in the canopy.
When Juan Pablo Culasso spends time outside, he often encounters people thinking he doesn’t belong out there as a blind person – despite the fact that he’s a renowned nature recordist. He helped design nature trails in Colombia with features that make them more accessible for people who are visually impaired, including guide ropes with textures that signal points of interest and QR codes that provide info. But Juan Pablo says these are not simply trails solely for blind people to enjoy — “we need to share the same places in society,” he says.
For many blind and low vision people, accessing outdoor spaces like parks can be challenging. Trails are often unsafe or difficult to navigate, signs don't usually have Braille, guides generally aren't trained to help disabled visitors, and so on. But nature recordist Juan Pablo Culasso, based in Bogata, Colombia, is changing that.
His ability to recognize and record nature's sounds has landed him jobs working for documentary soundtracks.
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The achievement was possible thanks to early music training and his perfect pitch. Alicia Munyo, who heads the phonology department at Uruguay's Republica University, says that perfect pitch has more to do with the brain than the ear: “It's not that these people hear more, they hear the same as anyone else,” said Munyo. "It's that their brain has a great capacity to interpret sounds and their nuances, much more than normal people do."
Juan Pablo Culasso is blind from birth, but he is one of the few bird watchers capable of identifying nearly 3,000 songs from 720 different species.
Juan Pablo's discography is made up of twelve discs that contain sounds from the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, the Amazon jungle, the west and south of Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, California and Minnesota (United States). Some of his work can be heard on his website or purchased through iTunes or CD Baby.
Uruguaio had more than 25 thousand sons of passaros taxed. Cego de nascença, he learns to use auditory acuity to study birds afraid of disappearing.
They say that when we lack one of our senses, others are heightened in unusual ways. But Juan's case is the product of two coincidences, one caused him to be born blind, another allowed him to have super hearing.
Juan Pablo Culasso, 'the most brilliant mind in Latin America' for his ability to recognize sounds and identify bird species, was in Ibagué as part of the Tolima Bird Festival.
Today we want to introduce Juan Pablo Culasso to the outstanding Uruguayan birdwatcher who has recorded the sound of more than 700 birds around the world and who will arrive in Chile at the end of October to participate in the VII South American Bird Fair.
He says he has been listening to the chirping of birds for most of his life. Which identifies three thousand sounds of more than seven hundred different species. And it is true. This talent not only led him to win the Latin America Superbrains contest in 2014, but also allows him to travel the world collecting the sounds of nature.
Juan Pablo Culasso will come to the Bird Fair to teach Caleños to see more than their plumage, their song. One of the most impressive sounds that he has recorded in his life, he found it in Colombia. He was in a cave in Río Claro, Antioquia, when he heard the guácharos and had the feeling that he had returned millions of years in the time machine.
Sensitivity, knowledge and dedication allow Juan Pablo Culasso to recognize the sounds of nature. Today he participates in Risaralda Bird Festival 2018 ... This week, in addition to being a lecturer at the Risaralda Bird Festival, he will walk the trails of the Otún Quimbaya Fauna and Flora Sanctuary to record the song of the Pied Piper for the first time.
Nature recordist / sound designer inspires while capturing birdsong and soundscapes with the 788T. Whether enduring South America's extreme heat or frigid mountain air, nature recordist Juan Pablo Culasso always sets out to capture high-quality unique bird sounds and soundscapes. Blind since birth, the 29-year-old Uruguayan-born Culasso has a unique perspective on sound recording.
Juan Pablo Culasso, a Uruguayan with perfect pitch who won the National Geographic “Super Brains” contest in 2014, made the Natural Sound Map of Uruguay. The album, now available on Spotify, brings together sounds of nature captured in various parts of the country, at different times of the day. Culasso is blind and won the National Geographic contest with the recognition of bird species by their sounds alone.
Uruguayan Juan Pablo Culasso, blind from birth and specialist in recording sounds of nature, has concentrated in recent years on recording bird songs.
In cooperation with Juan Pablo Culasso, IUCN NL partner organization Guyra Paraguay registered nature sounds in Los Tres Gigantes reserve in the Parguayan Pantanal. The recordings make a valuable addition to the biodiversity database of the reserve.
"I would not imagine doing anything else in my life," says Uruguayan Juan Pablo Culasso (31), blind from birth and bird watcher who has been recording and recognizing the songs of hundreds of species for 15 years. "Listening to them gives me supreme peace and tranquility," he says. He confesses that he has even cried with emotion when he found an elusive bird to detect.
I am self-taught because in Latin America there is still a lot of discrimination against people with disabilities, it is a fact and it is sad. Being blind they limit you to a few professions such as Psychology, Law or Philosophy. When you want to have a career that is not common, that is not part of the status quo for blind people, a lot of obstacles appear. But that has not made me give up my goals. It is true that the path to reach the goal is longer, but meeting the goal is really a great satisfaction.
Juan Pablo Culasso managed to turn his blindness into a tool to develop another capacity: he has the ability to recognize the song of some 3,000 species of birds. He has managed to turn his blindness into a tool to develop that capacity. Juan Pablo assures us that we all have that capacity but we have it asleep. He defines himself as a sound engineer of nature, especially birds. He is one of the few blind observers of nature and today he lectures around the world.
Now more than ever the sounds of nature are healing. Forget what you see. Do not get distracted. We are going to the Iguazú jungle, in the Argentine province of Misiones, and what you will hear when you finish reading was recorded by one of the most respected sound engineers in the world and one of the greatest experts on birds in South America. Juan Pablo Culasso, born in Uruguay 29 years ago, is able to identify around 720 species of birds, solely and exclusively by their songs.
Juan Pablo Culasso is a young Uruguayan who was born blind but that hasn't stopped him from enjoying bird watching. Culasso has the incredible ability to recognize the song of birds and thus be able to discover what species it is. The observer has more than 4,000 South American bird melodies in memory and is capable of recognizing at least 1,500 different species.
Uruguayan and currently based in Colombia, Juan Pablo Culasso regrets that the "Uruguay Natural" does not go beyond a title. At the end of April, Juan Pablo published the first Natural Sound Map of Uruguay, a work in which he invested a lot of time and effort.
Juan Pablo Culasso is passionate about the sounds of birds. In order to record them, he traveled to the Pantanal. As a result of that experience, he presented two record materials: Sounds of the Pantanal, with bird songs, and Soundscapes.
A year ago he won the contest on NatGeo; It opened the doors of the world and of Uruguay to him.
Imagine being at home, work, school or driving your car and listening to the sounds of birds and the countryside? ... The compact disc prepared by Juan Pablo Culasso, a Uruguayan expert in zoophony (sounds of nature), will allow you to do it.
One of my first interviews with a global medium. It was during the largest birding event in Latin America; Spot Brazil .
One of my first interviews with a global medium. It was during the largest birding event in Latin America; Spot Brazil .
Uruguay
Butterfly Effect Program: The Bird Maker
Juan Pablo Culasso, NatGeo Superbrains winner
Traveling through Brazil Program - Paisagens sonoros - Pantanal
Standout People Section - Colombia
Juan Pablo Culasso travels to Antarctica
Blind Uruguayan who travels through Antarctica to record its soundscape.
Seeing through the ears - Sound File.
History of my career.
Standout People Section - from the Lagos de Menegua Bioreserve, Meta, Colombia - Production of the Bird Sounds Library.
Specialized program on environmental issues, interview conducted during the visit to the city of Cali for the Colombi Birdfair 2016.
Latin American stories in audio, podcast. Produced by Nausícaa Palomeque and Martina Castro from Uruguay: Juan Pablo Culasso was born blind but sees things that others will never be able to. Read the full Spanish transcript here . Read the English translation here .
Watch a video with English subtitles here .
