Aaron Ximm's Bio

Aaron Ximm is a 33 year-old sound artist who lives and works in San Francisco. Since 1998, his Quiet American project has focused on constructing new sound-scapes from the intimate recordings he collects while traveling. Aaron and his wife Bronwyn won the Third Coast International Audio Festival's Director's Choice award in 2002 for their collaboration, Annapurna: Memories in Sound.

Ximm's recordings have also appeared in a variety of guises elsewhere in public radio, most notably in the Sound Travels segment of The Savvy Traveler. In 2002 he produced a four-hour documentary on sound artists working with field recordings, Quiet, Please, for KFJC. His work also appears with some frequency on London's ResonanceFM.

Aaron is perhaps most famous (at least in the Bay Area) for his award-winning Field Effects concert series, a venue that allows experimental sound artists to showcase their work.

Each month Aaron and his wife welcome 50-100 friends and community members into their brick-and-timber warehouse loft to listen "deeply" to the best of San Francisco's found-sound, live-looping and sound collages. Guests sprawl on futons and pillows in a large lantern lit room and partake of exquisite sound masterpieces.

His events are a place where people put microphones on rocks and then record the tapping, where artists mix intricate nature-scapes from recorded waterfalls and birds, and where recordings of household appliances are distorted beyond recognition. Aaron's personal work uses sound as both a narrative device and a primary aesthetic.

Audio
  Annapurna: Memories in Sound [entire show] (38.00). Download: MP3 [53mb]
  Vietnam (1998). Field Recordings Made in Vietnam