Listening to the rhythms of a community
Aaron Lewis '05 and the sounds of Mount Desert Island

Aaron Lewis came to College of the Atlantic as an accomplished musician, a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy. For his senior project, however, he focused not on creating harmony or rhythm, but on hearing it everywhere. Aaron spent the last year of his time at COA finding the ambient sounds that distinguish the island, whether it be the sound of ice cracking beneath a pond in Acadia National Park, the chatter of tourists in downtown Bar Harbor, the crash of a thunderstorm on his own porch or the banging of plates in the kitchen of the park's famous restaurant, the Jordan Pond House.

Trained as a classical violinist in Detroit, Michigan, Lewis is now a sound artist. His medium is the laughter of children, the rolling of surf, the breadth of wind through trees, the caroling at Christmas gatherings. His recording became an aural exhibit, "Sounds of Mount Desert Island" at the college's George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History consisting of hours of sounds, recorded edited and labeled, and later, a commercially-released double-CD album, Sounds of Mount Desert Island. The double set begins with a calming three minutes of the birds and babbles of Hunter's Brook, segueing into surf lapping on the sand at Hunter's Beach.

Aaron had never expected to attend college. He came to COA to visit a friend and began to change his mind. "What got me excited at COA, and made me want to be a part of it, was the people I met. They were just not like the people at other schools, who seemed to be there because they had to. At COA, there were friendly, approachable, really interesting people who seemed like they had a reason to be here. I saw that as long as I had the motivation and the drive, I could do work here I wouldn't be able to do elsewhere, I could be in charge of my own education."

Aaron began his sound collection project after doing an independent study with Nancy Andrews, COA's performance artist. Then he interned at an experimental center of sound art in Chicago. "I did some underwater recordings at the YMCA pool, and I just really enjoyed it, there was the joy of discovery and I began running around with a microphone. I even recorded the sounds of a computer. I love field recording," says Lewis. "It's history, community-building and journalism, capturing the sound of a place. I want to allow people who live here, those who visit and even those who've never been here a connection to the island through listening."

Lewis sees this work as broadening the definition of music, hearing the rhythms of the sound around him as a kind of improvisation, with unusual syncopation and texture. "The lack of visuals opens up the imagination," Lewis told a reporter for Maine Public Radio who drove 150 miles to hear his work. "It's like having a magnifying glass," he added. It's also an archival document of life on the island in the year of 2004-2005. In the years to come, he says, this will all matter.

Aaron's CD is available at this website: http://cdbaby.com/cd/aaronlewis