9 - The Soundscape and the Reshaping of Territories: Neighborhood Sounds in San Nicolás, Cali

Summary

For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.

—Jacques Attali

Auscultation, a term that comes from the Latin verb auscultare (to listen), is the process by which medical doctors listen to the interior of the human body using a stethoscope for examination. The stethoscope was invented in France in 1816; however, the act of listening to the body for diagnostic purposes precedes the invention of the artifact. By inventing the stethoscope, Rene Laennec only refined one of the procedures that were commonly used by doctors, which consisted of placing the ear directly on the patient's chest to hear the organs inside the body. Auscultation is still used as a regular medical procedure that links sound with specific pathological changes in both the chest and the heart.

While auscultation has been used to diagnose the human body for centuries, approaching sound as an object of study is a very recent phenomenon. One of the first attempts at introducing sound as means to exploring a landscape was suggested by Finnish geographer Johannes Gabriel Grano, who at the end of the 1920s invited other fellow geographers to “look” at a landscape with more than just the eyes, to survey the site with all their senses, including hearing (Uimonen). Urban planners like Kevin Lynch and Michael Southworth introduced the variable of sound (and the sensory experience) to the research conducted on urban spaces since the early 1960s. However, it was not until 1970s that Canadian composer, music educator, and environmentalist Raymond Murray Schafer formally introduced the study of sound through the term “soundscape.”

The soundscape is an acoustic examination of an environment, which can consist of natural sounds as well as those produced by humans as a result of the activities and social practices that take place in a given area. The interest in exploring soundscapes originated at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) where Schafer and his colleagues first launched the World Soundscape Project. The idea emerged from Schafer's preoccupation with the deterioration of the soundscape of his city. The first of the projects, The Vancouver Soundscape, aimed at raising awareness of noise pollution and drawing attention to the importance of preserving and constructing healthy sonic environments.