Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night

How to Measure Quietness demonstrates Kim’s use of musical notation to quantify emotional states, body language, or even highly subjective concepts like importance. Taking the form of a decibel chart, Kim’s drawing signals different degrees of volume with the dynamic notation “p” for piano, which denotes softness in musical scores. While “pp” expresses the low volume of a shrug, for example, “pppppppp” expresses the overwhelming quietness of receiving a “silent treatment.” This work exemplifies Kim’s use of humor to question assumptions about shared experiences of sound, not only as an acoustic experience but also when used in commonplace metaphors or turns of phrase.