The Polysemic Nature of Noise


 

Ana Dominguez Ruiz’s work in Mexico City aims at understanding “why a certain kind of culture called urban is the most favorable context for the emergency of that sonic configuration we know as noise” (Dominguez Ruiz 2012: 6-7). With the decades, we have learnt to naturalize the connection between city and noise, forgetting the cultural dimension of the sonic phenomenon as a consequence. Hence, noise finally takes the place of sound in the ways we perceive the audible environment of urban spaces. However, what particularities do sonic phenomena display when they are conceived as noise? 

 

During the first half of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires consolidated itself materially and symbolically as a modern city. The street pavement, the buildings, the industrial development, and the rise of dispersed centers were part of such intense growth that “around 1940 empty spaces were scarce” (Gutiérrez and Romero 1989: 33). New roads connected the main centers of commercial activity with peripheral areas. New means of transportation appeared: trams, the underground, taxis, taxi-buses, buses. The city’s population increased notoriously during this metropolization process between 1887 and 1936, going from 400.000 to 1.200.000 inhabitants (Zunino Singh 2013: 175). We will present specific experiences that we gathered in the archive research regarding the way in which this “civilizing process” (Elias 1987) gave place to new sonic practices and “audile techniques” (Sterne 2003: 23). It is not unexpected, therefore, that the compiled documents provide ideas about how the sounds of Buenos Aires during this systematic transformation process were perceived. As we shall see, the meanings given to noise belonged to a modern imaginary that was part of the city’s life and the subject’s practices. That is why the state tried to regulate them.