one-minute vacation: quiet american

Found this site a while back. Random, 1-minute recordings. From anywhere. Amazing stuff: one-minute vacation.

The idea belongs to Aaron Ximm, who called it "unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else." No music, no narration, no editing. A minute of a place with the microphone left running: rain on a roof in Japan, a market in Brazil, ice moving in Iceland, a room in Venice with the window open.

The remarkable thing is that it is all still there. Something like three hundred and twenty-seven recordings from contributors around the world, and the site has outlived nearly everything else linked from this blog. Ximm put the project on hold years ago, with a note about early parenthood and an intention to reboot it when he catches his breath, which is the most honest sign-off on the internet.

It holds up better than it has any right to, and it is a good thing to have open while you are planning. A minute of somewhere you have never been does more for the itch than any amount of photography.

Posted 22 April 2003 by Ant in Eurail Blog Archives · updated by Chris