The Longest Hum, 2021, vocal participatory action, 21 years, launched 16.10.2021, updated 20.05.22.
The Longest Hum is an interactive voice work by Tina Stefanou (with Patrick Hase and Alisa Blakeney). It is sown together with voices, codes, locations, stringy bits and a desire to create the longest humming action in the Universe.
Put your hums into it
The Longest Hum is…
a digital river system
a sketch-becoming
a living time capsule
a community broadcast
a collective action
a humming cycle
a planetary commoning
a long chain of events
This action will run for 21 years and requires your hums to keep it alive and growing. The action morphs over time and becomes more and more animated. It starts with a single hum, a sketch of locations, an open invitation that slowly forms a connective tissue. The hum is a gentle, musically democratic, and direct way to interact with both human and the more-than-human. Hums are utterances found in the voice of humans, machines, and non-human species, as well as sonic artefacts found within the botanical world, and planetary rotation. It is an utterance that challenges the logical isolation of the English language – it is pre-speech, subterranean, pre-linguistic, pre-enunciative and within it exists pure potential.
Calling all hummers
The hum can be from your voice, or the voice of your fridge, dog, or thunderstorm. Why 21 years you might ask? Honouring The Spirit and of 21’ and an affirmative “f@$k off” to divisive narratives, together we are creating a real-time humming capsule full of curiosity and thick relational webs, as we head further into all sorts of changes. How will our humming shift over the next 21 years? How will technology develop? How will we retell stories of hum’s past?
Instructions:
1. Record your hums onto a device.
2. Upload your hum audio file and enter your postcode and country.
3. Watch your hum enter the collective action.
4. You can isolate your hum and see how it connects to other hums.
5. Over time the hums will get longer and longer, more complex and evolved.
The Longest Hum, 2021, instructional video, featuring original footage from The Baltic Way 1989, and hummers: Emily Bennett, Irene Poutakidis, George Poutakidis, Sophia, Kristina and Pauli Dimeralous, Mattie-Martha Sempert, James Hazel, Siena Rose Jacobs, Sophia and George Stefanou.
Commissioned by Cementa