ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of the hum consists of a low-pitched drone, the source of which, indefinably outside and inside, both domestic and alien, is unidentifiable. The hum is the jouissance of the machine, enjoying itself at our expense, the machine’s quiet hum of satisfaction at the jouissance expended in the attempt to keep up with the demands and endless upgrades of everyday technocapitalism; the jouissance lubricating and accelerating the machine to its moment of so-called “singularity”, the point from which it becomes entirely autonomous from the finitude of human desire. If the hum is a delusion, it is the very delusion of form itself, and its perception. That is to say, the hum gives minimal form to the infinite resonance of one’s own distress and radical meaninglessness that is continuous with the formlessness of the chaotic abyss.
