Description
From a gentle and soothing voice that is personal and intimate to hums that are mystical, impersonal and maddening, this book provides an anthropology of the concept of humming through the discipline of sound studies.
About the Author
Suk-Jun Kim is Lecturer in Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art and Programme Director of MMus in Sonic Arts at the University of Aberdeen, UK.
Reviews
Hmmm. Your lips are sealed and your mouth is closed, and yet you have a voice. Whence does it come? How can it be both sonorous and silent? By what means does it overflow a body that has turned in on itself? How can it hang in the air? This is not just a book about humming. Rather, Suk-Jun Kim uses the hum to penetrate the cracks in the very surface of existence. In so doing, he offers a profound meditation on the phenomena of language, voice and being. * Tim Ingold, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, UK *
In Humming Suk-Jun Kim investigates a sounding practice beyond artistic research, although the book originated in a sound art project. Probing the sound and the phenomenon of the hum with phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches, he opens up a philosophical perspective, neither eschewing further-reaching arguments, psychoanalysis, nor poetic passages. This concise study gives food for thought to artists and academics. * Julia Schroeder, Researcher at ARS - Cupras, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany *
From hum collecting in the field, via Cage, Calvino, Kafka, Tarkovsky and Prime Minister David Cameron, and elaborated through the discourse of psychoanalysis, Suk-Jun Kim personably and eruditely shows us that the humming of ourselves and others, a universally familiar yet furtive phenomenon, offers a nuanced opening for sound studies and the study of the voice - there is nothing humdrum about humming. * John Drever, Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *
Humming is ubiquitous, yet its meaning and significance has received little attention by scholars of sound. All that changes with Suk-Jun Kim's Humming. In this slim but tightly-argued volume, Kim explicates humming through a critical and psychoanalytic lens. The result is a lucid yet intricate account of humming's deceptive simplicity. * Brian Kane, Associate Professor of Music, Yale University, USA, and author of Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice (2014) *
Book Information
ISBN 9781501324611
Author Professor Suk-Jun Kim
Format Paperback
Page Count 124
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Weight(grams) 196g