Aaron Ximm

A few weeks ago, I attended a performance by Aaron Ximm. Ximm is a sound artist who goes out into the world and records the sounds of the world. Anything, he will record it. He then takes these sounds that he has gathered, into his studio and turns them into sound art. He jumbles them up, adds effects, and mixes them and then presents them to the public. When I went in, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from his pieces. I thought that they might get a little weird and try to be overly ‘artsy,’ and by that I mean he would come across as trying to hard to prove something instead of working from the heart. However, Ximm’s evening of sound was nothing short of amazing. The room was completely pitch black and Ximm even encouraged us to close our eyes. The sounds came rolling out at me and I sat back and closed my eyes and I began to wonder what these sounds were. I couldn’t stop listening, I needed to listen closely and try to identify what I was hearing. Ximm’s sound were incredible to listen to. The clarity and volume of the sounds just pulverized you and you could move. You needed to listen, you wanted to listen and see where this man was going to go with this. To me, his pieces were like a mini-operetta, and were broken up into separate movements. I also began to notice that there were some incredible rhythms Ximm created in the piece. One example comes to mind in Ximm’s first piece. What sounded like a thousand different voices saying different things began to morph and become a phrase we could hear. Then it would split off again into some madness but eventually return to another phrase we could understand. I believe I was tapping my foot along with the piece at that point. I picked out a beat and felt it, which I’m sure Ximm felt as well. In fact, that I point that Bach brought up in our lecture about hearing music when you least suspect it. Ximm accomplished that well here. They had an incredible flow to them as well, each piece felt right in it’s placement, it didn’t feel awkward. It was just an environment of relaxation and you just need to sit and listen. It’s in our nature to try and to identify sounds, the funny thing about that is I didn’t force myself to imagine the images, it happened completely on it’s own. I wanted a visual compliment to these sound naturally. Which is very similar but also different than Sutton’s work with “At Sea.” Both pieces were designed to get the audience involved in the work. They wanted us to help them out. They were asking for our help, they wanted us to complete the work. In the privacy of our own minds. However, both in different way. Hutton by picture with no sound and Ximm with sound but no visual. When I was watching “At Sea,” I was a bit on edge and was trying a bit to hard to hear what the images would sound like. I think that took away from the experience, looking back on it now. The silence in the theater also took away from the experience due to the fact that you can hear every movement that everyone in the theater makes. I was just a bit into creating the sounds and maybe should have paid more attention to the film. With Ximm, I felt very relaxed, it was easier to imagine what sound looked like rather than making sounds for a picture. At least for me.