Reading Response #2

The article that I selected was Aaron Ximm’s Sound, Art, Music?. The main reason why I chose this article was because I found out that Aaron Ximm would be visiting our class and wanted to know more about him. I also felt that this article was very prevalent to what we were doing in class right now with everything going on with drift 2. Besides those two reasons for choosing this article, I mainly was just interested in the subject matter. I had wondered myself about whether sound art was music or art or just merely sounds, and this is what Ximm contemplates. Ximm meditates on himself as a sound artist and what that means in our world.

Ximm has some main points that he puts forth in his essay. One of his main points that he puts across is that he labels himself as a sound artist. He goes into how he could be labeled as other things, but he finds that this label is most fitting for what he does. Another point Ximm puts across is that a sound artist’s work can not be classified as sound, art, or music exclusively. It is such a wide medium that the work can fit into any of those classifications and so therefore should try to be classified into those descriptions. The overall main point that Ximm makes in his essay is that he really does not know how to classify his work. He says he is a sound artist, but he does not want to be forced into a certain niche. Ximm wants to be able to work freely without having to place himself into a certain classification of artist.

Ximm’s ideas are very relevant to my practice as a media artist. I can specifically connect with his conundrums on whether sound recording and editing is music, art, or just sound. I felt that way during drift 1 and I felt that his article addressed a lot of my thoughts on sound recording. I have always felt that sound recording is hard to classify as anything, and Ximm reflects on this. I find Ximm saying that he really does not know what sound art is, to be very true and I connect with this completely.