Aaron Ximm | USA

Project: As Paredes Têm Ouvidos (The Walls Have Ears)
Category: Sound Art, Phonograhy
Period: April 2007
Event: Arts Residency

1. Notes about Aaron Ximm's residency

Aaron Ximm’s residency was in a great measure a typical residency of a phonographer. But his approach included some particular elements that are worth being analyzed.

More than trying to understand beforehand in detail the space he was going to develop his work in, Aaron chose to let his own wanderings raise questions within himself, which response would only serve to confirm or clarify a perception already sensed.

In a way, it can be said that the work process evolved from a ‘macro’ to a ‘micro’ sense; starting from a mapping that allowed him to build a grid of the main variables at play: water, animals, human presence, signs and habits, constructions, reverberations of the space itself, topology, etc.

It is interesting to note that Aaron always acted in an independent fashion, even taking the risk of facing some difficulties in communicating with the locals. The truth is that throughout the days the level of communication increased in an effortless way, as if his condition of being a foreigner were an important variable of the process and didn’t need to be held back or dodged.

The artist’s work routine was essentially solitary, with a schedule adjusted in order to maximize the opportunities for interesting sound recordings. This approach led to some isolation from the social dynamics of the residency, especially at the beginning; as if Aaron didn’t want to lose focus from his work.

As Aaron started to create a beginning sketch of his work, most likely getting the first answers and structuring the format of his intervention, a social distention and permeability were felt. By then, one could sense that Aaron had built solid foundations on which his work could be effortlessly developed.

His approach to technology was also very particular; he was equipped with a set of sound recording solutions with distinct characteristics and played with them in a serene way, adjusting each one according to the specific contexts and avoiding over-experimentation. Obviously, the fact that he mastered those technologies means that he knows their validity in each particular situation.

Time. This evanescent variable by definition was probably the one that allowed Aaron to produce a most original work.

When Aaron followed the same trails several times, in diverse meteorological conditions, at diverse times of the day; we could feel that we were witnessing something not tried before in Nodar in terms of sound recordings.

Aaron was also able to dig deep in terms of the sounds that characterize Nodar, avoiding the ones that are too predominant (the river, the sheep bells, etc.) and bringing to the surface other sounds that are much more difficult to perceive (for example, the sound of the bees).

An interesting aspect of Aaron’s final presentation, in particular of his sound installation (“As paredes têm ouvidos”, “The walls have ears”) was the “compressed” form in which diverse acoustic realities coexisted side by side in each one of the listening spots placed inside the clefts of a slate wall, creating a sense of “strangeness” (water coexisting with bees; sounds of animals coming out of a wall, etc.).

This installation was based on the idea of a dialectic interplay between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’ (rock walls as accumulated repositories of memory) and functioned as a “concentric limit” of the work developed throughout the three-week residency: the sounds captured in the open landscape were transported to a single location and set up for an intimate listening experience.

In semiotic terms, the installation functioned as a “magnifying filter” by creating a concentrated “hyper-reality”, which is necessarily a subversion of the reality itself.

But this is the role of the artist: he operates beyond a mere ecologic / anthropologic research by applying sensible mechanisms of translocation/ concentration/ diffusion/ choice/ interpretation/ speculation to the gathered materials.

The parallel work developed by Aaron of recording 24 hours of sounds from one particular spot (the balcony of the residency) functioned as a counterpoint to the sound installation that he presented at the end of the residency.  Instead of directing the recording process to specific elements that are more or less identifiable in the Nodar soundscape, this parallel work deals with the underlying paradox of a creative decision that is materialized into something that is totally random and independent of the human presence.

Perhaps the subsequent treatment of these 24-hour recordings will create an effect similar to that of Aaron’s sound installation, as mechanisms of concentration will be involved in this process. With an important difference:

Whereas in the sound installation there are immediately perceivable highlights of attention (the water, the human voices, the buzzing of the bees, etc.), in the treatment of the 24-hour recordings, the “intermediate zones” (the interstices between major sound events) are the elements with greater acoustic density, as they are dominant in a full-day soundscape.

An apparently secondary element of Aaron’s final presentation raised an interesting reflection: when he played back a sound piece created from recordings made in his hometown (San Francisco, California), as an example of the type of work he usually makes, the audience immediately manifested their curiosity (probably in a much more outspoken way than relatively to the remaining of the presentation).

This reaction is an indication of the importance of the exchange of experiences between the artists-in-residency and the local population, of a bi-directional communication that will have to be deepened and stimulated in future residences.

Finally, we cannot hide our curiosity about the fact that the hours of recordings made by Aaron Ximm will be listened to in many other places of the world, namely where the artist lives (California). This curiosity is even bigger when we think that the material collected and presented in Nodar has still a creative itinerary to be concluded: Aaron will build a sound piece from the sounds gathered in Nodar. Some questions arise: What will the final act of “musical” composition result in? How will the listeners react to it? What type of stimuli will they have? How will they imagine Nodar? These questions have an uncertain yet fascinating response. It is ironic that an apparently isolated and forgotten place like Nodar can have a visibility (or audibility) not easily imagined.

(Thanks to Maile Colbert for revising this english version)