Verbal Decription: Scrib-Acousmatic, 2017

Narrator: The Grid of Prefixed Acousmatics is a series of drawing and sculpture pairs on view. Six drawings, in two horizontal rows of three, hang on the wall above a covered pedestal. The pedestal is 32 inches tall, with a white base and a clear plexiglass cover protecting the sculptures inside. There are six sculptures sitting atop the pedestal within the plexiglass: three in the front, three in the back on risers. The term “acousmatic”, refers to a sound being heard without a visible source. The artist likens the idea of acousmatic sounds to the way an interpreter gives voice to sounds and speech through American Sign Language. 

Scrib-Acousmatic is the drawing and sculpture in the middle of the top row. The drawing is made with charcoal on paper, and measures 9 ½ inches tall by 12 ½ inches wide. In the top left corner, the prefix “SCRIB-” is written in all caps in a dark, blocky handwritten font. There’s a quick thick dash, and then written in much thinner pencil is “write, written”. The sculpture is sketched in the center of the paper with thick, dark lines, a fountain pen in a holder. The holder is drawn as a rectangle at ¾ view extending toward the back right corner from the paper, and the pen appears as a long rounded antenna with a spherical knob at the end launching from the front toward the same corner, hovering above the rectangular plate below it. Below the rendering is four scrawled lines, handwritten in all caps, which read, “ASSOCIATIONS:”, “I OFTEN GET ASKED TO DJ RADIO INTERVIEWS IN EUROPE”, “HARD TO GET THESE TRANSCRIBED” and “TRANSCRIPTS”. The vibe of the drawing is like a thoughtful, confident blueprint, with the combination of handwritten musings and the bold lines of the charcoal.

The corresponding Scrib-Acousmatic sculpture sits in the middle of the raised back row. It measures 7 inches tall, 11 inches wide, and 8 inches deep, and is a porcelain representation of the drawing of a pen in a holder. The flat base of the holder has the words “SCRIB-ACOUSMATIC” handwritten on it in thick black capital glazed letters. The pen tapers in such a way that it seems like one could nestle the second half into the first. Each edge of the sculpture is outlined with black stain, with a bit of messiness and waviness to each outline, as if the line drawing were directly made three-dimensional. Kim also brushed the sculpture with a light wash of blue glaze. Curator Jennie Goldstein describes the work: “for Scrib-Acousmatic, the artist made a ceramic pen into a kind of elongated shape, like a fountain pen in a holder. And the association that she writes references her personal experiences of being asked to give interviews on the radio, but then struggling to get a transcript of that interview made”.