I Love It, I Hate It

I would like to contrast the following two works:

• Glenn Bach’s performance of Aaron Ximm’s Quiet American project
• Gatten’s What the Water Said No. 1-3
• Gatten’s What the Water Said No. 4-6

The first thing I wish to address is the role of sound in each one against the entirety of the work. The majority of the art world is grounded in the visual sense. Performance art is usually “viewed”, theater is both “viewed and heard”, film is “viewed”, sometimes “heard”, paintings / sculptures are “viewed” and music is exclusively “heard”.


Aaron Ximm’s works are difficult to categorize. He’s a sound artist, but that term is not easily applied to many other artists - although there are very musical qualities of his field recordings, he is not a musician in the classical sense.


Gatten, however, is a filmmaker. Plain and simple! His two sets of What the Water Said are primarily visual (in my opinion). Sound is an important part of it, however. Both the visual and sonic qualities of the work were produced at the same time, in the same manner. Vision, however, is primarily how we see the world. Therefore, we perceive Gatten’s work primarily through our eyes. Sound comes secondary, falling behind as a supplemental experience.


Ximm’s work are exclusively aural. There is both something musical and narrative out of the sounds he captures - ones that are captured with great interest and care. Field recordings as clear and prominent as Aaron Ximm’s take a great deal of dedication - physical, emotional, creative and financial (a single picture in Glenn’s presentation is burned into my memory - I counted at least seven blimps - each housing what I can only imagine is a microphone worth more than my tuition). Gatten’s piece, I’m aware, took dedication in its idea (at the least), but its execution seems to be somewhat haphazard.


The charm of What the Watter Said is its inherent randomness and non-linearity. Because entire reels of the film were all exposed at once, they were allowed to be physically changed by their environment at any point during its production. Unlike cameras, whose sole purpose is to only expose one frame at a time, in sequential order, through the entire roll of film. I enjoy the non-predictability of project media - how ever viewing can be different in some respect than all previous and all future screenings. I think Gatten’s pieces lend themselves to this idea.


I think the sound brings this idea to the next level, however. With the sound track on the film being manipulated in the same manner as the visual track, we’re experiencing what I can only describe as two separate pieces in two separate mediums being played in synchronization. What the Water Said could very well shed its soundtrack, and allow that to be played alone to become a work of primary sound - and I believe that it would successfully hold the same ideas.