Found Sounds

Aaron Ximm's "One Minute Vacations"..."are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else." He explains: "The project began as I grappled with what it meant to be a tourist in another culture. It continues as I grapple with what it means to be a tourist in my own."

He's been collecting what are called "field recordings" since 1998. "While traveling in Vietnam, I recorded musicians, trains, moving water, crickets, monks, markets, metalwork, tired animals, and drunken tourists. The earliest work on this site is the result of my discovery of ways of working with that sound as sole medium."

Found sounds. Amazing how we kind of disregard the sounds our environments make when we experience them, and yet never really discard them. Listening to a found sound is remembering. Or at least imagining that we do.

Being a collector of found sounds is a junkly pursuit par excellence. The bigger the collection, the more choices, the more choices, the more fun. The very act of capturing the sound is at least as moving for the sound finder as it is for the found sound listener. It is to hear in the ambiance of every day noise the constant invitation to play.

He suggests you use your headphones. I concur.