The City of Noise: An Approach to the Multiple Senses of Sound in Buenos Aires

Abstract

In this article we propose a historical approach to noise in Buenos Aires during the first half of the twentieth century. During this period, Buenos Aires consolidated itself materially and symbolically as a modern city. Through the study of historical documents, we identified different meanings of noise in relation to progress, health, culture, silence, space, and time. The main argument is that, at first, social imaginary associated noise to progress; however, this view rapidly changed in the search for an ideal of relative silence. In this process, some specific sonic practices started being classified as uncivilized. In this sense, the modern imaginary delineates the boundaries of what is acoustically tolerable; this produces human subjects perceived as morally inferior, whose practices must be legally regulated. This is the context for the emergence of devices aimed at controlling and mitigating urban noise: legal norms and measuring systems that intend to regulate ? albeit inefficiently ? the sonic habitus.