2021

essence press print series

A new occasional print series was launched in early 2021, beginning with a new print work by Thomas A Clark, and followed by a print by Julie Johnstone (at top of page).

barely audible | a book of quiet

This book was selected for the AMBruno 2021 Volume project.

0dB represents the threshold of human hearing. Sounds registering 10dB are classified as ‘barely audible’, a soundscape perceived as quiet. This book explores the ‘volume’ or ‘substance’ that is ‘quiet’.

A blank page or book is a container holding emptiness, lacking visual and aural noise. In the tradition of ‘blank’ books, the blankness occupies the page, giving the book its meaning both experientially and conceptually.

The book has eight facing and eight verso pages. Each facing page is blank. Every other verso contains a faintly visible phrase representing a sound given in decibel charts as ‘barely audible’: ‘a breath’, ‘a pin dropping’, ‘a leaf falling’, and finally, imagined for this book: ‘a page gently turned’. The reader turns each page, becoming quieter in the process, meeting each phrase then an intervening blankness, witnessing their own quietened actions in the final phrase. The book contains quiet, is quiet, and induces quiet.