Noise revisited: mapping sounds of the graphic arts industry in Cali, Colombia.

• In Event: Creative Cities

Abstract

San Nicolás, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Cali (Colombia), has hosted the city´s printing industry for over a century. Today, an area of approximately 20 city blocks hosts more than 500 businesses, where despite the emergence of new technologies, lithographic machines, letterpresses, and both manual and electric paper guillotines, continue to perform daily. Such concentration not only attests to the importance San Nicolás has played in the development of the city´s graphic arts industry, it also shapes, through its sounds, the distinct soundscape that identifies this neighborhood. The close analysis of an acoustic atmosphere, such as the one in San Nicolás, is another vehicle by which to examine the dynamics of urban life and the different spatiotemporal relations that are weaved within a given environment. This paper aims at assessing the appropriateness of integrating both quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to explore the phenomenon of urban sounds from an interdisciplinary perspective, taking the study of this particular neighborhood as an example, and based on the theoretical and methodological approaches that resulted from a year´s fieldwork conducted between January 2014 and May 2015.

Author

• Margarita Cuellar, Icesi University