In our inaugural issue of Tunings, while intentionally without theme, the selected works tell their own story: how we tune ourselves to our surroundings, how they tune to us, the experience of the voyage, of longing, distance, and the observation of our physical world.

We are offered journeys of discovery while navigating one's inner experience, such as Sopho Toliashvili's "Bookmarks," a short memoir on her visit to Yerevan while processing changes back home in Tbilisi. Communions with nature as an act of curiosity in Edmée van Rijn's "A Stinky Little Treasure," and as philosophical reverence in Tuğba Tokatlıoğlu's "Tellerde Büyüyen Çiçeklere Övgü." We are taken into nature's almost psychedelic depths through Clare Casey's poem "The Slowest Way" and David Stanford's hallucinatory five-minute field recording, "Wrought Iron, Rain."

The mundane has its clashes with nature in Homa Meyvani's "Not Every Tree Can Endure the Cruelty of Autumn" - musical improvisations and photos on how Tehran's autumn never seemed to finally end. And we face the hypnosis of the material world in Sam King's opener, "Honeysuckle and Black Locust". Artists Laura Brodax and Michael Shannon present their haunting nature photographs throughout, with Laura's 15-minute pinhole color exposures capturing time as a spectral entity in and of itself. Composers Kristofer Svensson, Eric Lanzillotta and Christopher Arnett offer variations on scores and perspectives on sound and sonic communion.

In the first volume, you will find the artists mentioned above and many more.

We feel our first volume of Tunings not only spans a vast spectrum of human emotion, but also one of curiosity, exploration and discovery. We present this journal to offer works that we trust stand both alone and in relationship, that take us deeper into ourselves, that connect us across a world filled with moments of disconnection. As a physical experience, our hope is to offer an object that can place us within many worlds long after our first meeting.