{
  "title": "AURA",
  "category": "[SHORT-STORY]",
  "article": "Based on a short story by Carlos Fuentes…\n“Recipient of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting award for Best Radio Drama, 1984.\n“Combining sounds recorded in Mexico City and indigenous actors, Fuentes’ dreamlike realism\nspawns an exquisite and hypnotic chiller. Felipe Montero responds to a want ad in the Mexico\nCity newspaper. He’s exactly right for the job—it’s as though the ad was written just for him. At\nthe address he meets a woman who surely must be over a hundred years old, and her young niece,\nAura. A strange force takes over and Felipe can’t help but be drawn into their lives…”\n[Ivan Olson, Fresno Bee Republican] “…novelet about a young teacher of history who moves into\nthe mansion of an aged widow to write a general's memoirs. And there he meets Aura. Love of a\ngreen eyed beauty and physical degeneration and death—two favorite themes of Poe and\nBaudelaire—are woven so dexterously together that the fascination continues to glow long after\nthe book is finished.”\n[Robert Nott, New Mexican, September 9, 2005] “Global DanceFest — now celebrating its fifth\nyear in Albuquerque — kicks off another season of world dance productions with Aura, based on\nthe novella of the same name by Carlos Fuentes. The piece, co-presented by VSA North Fourth Art\nCenter and NevvArt New Mexico, features 10 dancers who explore via movement, the sensual and\nmysterious elements within Fuentes' story.\n“Aura deals with a young historian who agrees to help an elderly widow with her late husband's\nmemoirs in her creepy old mansion. In the process he falls for the widow's young niece, Aura —\nbut there's something weird about the whole setup, including the widow's relationship with Aura.”\n[Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times] “Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's leading writer (best known\nfor \"Where the Air Is Clear\" and \"The Death of Artemio Cruz,\" both about the Mexican\nRevolution), turns to the horror tale in his latest book. The setting of ''Aura\" is a mysterious,\ndilapidated, unlit house in a poor section of Mexico City. To the house comes Felipe Montero, a\nyouthful historian \"full of useless facts,\" to take a job editing the private memoirs of a long dead\nFrench general for his ancient widow.\n“The memoirs — thick, musty bundles of manuscripts tied in red ribbons—are kept in an old\ntrunk in the widow's bedroom and are jealously guarded her and the squealing rats that infest\nthat corner of her room. As she hands the bundles, one at a time, to Felipe to edit, a strange\neroticism spreads through the house like a poisonous mist. Felipe seduces, or is seduced by the\nwidow’s beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. Slowly at first, and then faster, the three of them are\nsucked into a hypnotic nightmare as the secret of the memoirs and the relationship of the two\nwomen become frighteningly clear.”\nIn 1996 a stage version was presented by the Chicago Dramatists Workshop…\nIn 1987. Mario Lavista received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his first and only opera Aura, based\non the short story by Carlos Fuentes.\nFebruary 16 - 20, 2005\nContradanza and Rosanna Gamson / World Wide\nAura -- World Premiere\nMexico City's acclaimed contemporary dance company Contradanza collaborates with Los\nAngeles choreographer Rosanna Gamson and her company World Wide to premiere Aura, a new\ninternational collaboration. The evening-length dance theater piece is inspired by Mexican author\nCarlos Fuentes' famous novella Aura, a ghost story set in a labyrinthine unnamed city. RG/WW in\ncollaboration with Mexican choreographer Cecilia Appleton and her company Contradanza merge\nmovement, bilingual text and evocative theatrical images to explore the duality of Latino and\nAnglo cultures in Los Angeles.\n[Gary Ferrington, “Audio Design: Creating Multi-Sensory Images for the Mind,” Journal of\nVisual Literacy (1993)] “A critical difference between stereo and binaural playback is the aural\neffect each has on the listener when headphones are used. A stereo recording will sound as though\nit is originating within the listener's head. One seemingly becomes the soprano singing all the\nhigh notes. The sound from a binaural recording will seemingly exist in a spatial field outside the\nhead forming a 360 degree sphere of acoustical space around the listener. A knock on the door, in\na binaurally produced ghost story, is quite startling. The binaural production of audio plays has\nopened new production opportunities. In the ZBS presentation of Carlos Fuentes' Aura, the\nlistener enters the dark landscape of the mind. A young man answers a newspaper ad and finds\nhimself drawn into the lives of a reclusive old woman and her beautiful daughter who live in\nhouse devoid of daylight. The ambient sound was recorded on-site in Mexico City and the use of\nbinaural technology enhances the listener's sense of presence's in each scene of the play.”\n53rd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the Venice Biennale, chaired by Paolo\nBaratta, to be held in Venice from 25th September to 3rd October 2009. The presentation of the\nmultimedia work by José-María Sánchez-Verdú, Aura, based on the novel by Carlos Fuentes\n(Teatro Goldoni, 1 October), is another important moment in the 53rd Festival. Born in the\ncontext of the European performance network (ENPARTS) that the Biennale has launched with\nother international partners and with the support of the Culture Programme of the European\nUnion, the work had its premiere at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid last May and will be\nperformed at the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart on 17 and 18 July before arriving in Venice.\n[Denis Donoghue, New York Times, 1990] “His major fictions are projects of the bizarre and the\nuncanny. He is not content for long to gratify one's sense of the usual, or one's prejudice in its\nfavor. I would not like to be asked to say what precisely happens in ''Aura'' (1962).\nIan Watson,\nWRITING/ADAPTATION (THEATRE)\nBitter Fantasy - Loosely based on the Carlos Fuentes novella \"Aura\" - 1989.\nLa strega in amore (1966\n'FRITZ' CREATES THREE-DIMENSIONAL RADIO\n(Neumann KU-100 artificial head mike system)\nBetty Smith...put on a pair of headphones to audition Carlos Fuentes' \"Aura,\" the first of a series\nof three-dimensional radio dramas...After a few minutes, she heard footsteps and a voice behind\nher, and turned around. There was no one else in the room.\n\"I knew what to expect, but I was still fooled,\" she said... \"Kunstkopf\" binaural sound is a step\nbeyond stereo. Where stereo creates the illusion of sound originating on both sides of the listener,\nbinaural sound also reproduces sound behind, above, in front and below...\nFritz, officially the KU-81i dummy head manufactured in Germany by the Georg Neumann Corp. ,\nis a gray, solid-rubber replica of a human head, mounted on a microphone stand pole...Fritz\nembodies several improvements over early binaural mechanisms. .. By measuring more than 70\nears, Neumann calculated an average size and shape, according to Tom Lopez, president of ZBS\nMedia...Because the solid rubber... has about the same density as a human head, the dummy's\nears have the same acoustic properties as a human's. . . Neumann solved the loudspeaker\n[playback] problem with... acoustic delays (in essence, sound filters) placed in Fritz' auditory\ncanals enabling the microphones to cope with the diffuse and complex sounds coming in from all\ndirections.. .\nAt a stroke, the old studio recording techniques...became obsolete. ZBS couldn't rely on a couple\nof actors speaking all the parts while a sound person rattles doorknobs and rings telephones in\nthe background because the Kunstkopf would reproduce what was happening too accurately...\nScrewing the head onto a stand and attaching it to a Sony portable digital recorder, ZBS went on\nlocation. Lopez...carried Fritz around to record footsteps approaching over fallen leaves and\nvoices echoing in a stairwell... The listener hears the sound...with a devastating intimacy.\n[from The Boston Globe, October 1984]",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "THE CABINET OF DR. FRITZ (DISC SERIES BY ZBS FOUNDATION)\nCirca 1984\n“Aura”\nPERSONNEL: Roert Bielecki (Location sound engineer), Tim Clark (music),\nThomas Lopez (scriptwriter, producer), William Raymond (director).\nCAST: Yamilla Constantina (Aura), Lope Einecka (Senora Consuello), Gregorio\nRosenblum (Felipe Montero).\nEXTANT RECORDING",
  "sources": "Ferrington, Gary. “Audio Design: Creating Multi-Sensory Images for the Mind.” Journal of Visual Literacy\n(1993).\nFuentes, Carlos. Aura.",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}