​ZACHARY C MITCHELL

​​The Nature of the Project

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I am going to break from the third-person here, given the nature of this project.  Originally, I sought to process my own feelings and response to the stay-at-home order here in Washington State by translating those emotions into music.  However, as the isolation progressed, I heard from friends and family about the way the isolation was affecting them - all in different ways and to varying degrees.  My own pandemic lexicon expanded greatly, and as an empathetic individual, I felt some form of connection to these emotions in others.  As a result, I conceived of the Isolation Response Project.

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The Goal of the Project

Simply put, the Project's goal is to take responses to a series of questions and convert those responses into a musical form.  The concurrent goal is to help participants process their emotions by speaking about them.

I am asking participants to send in audio or video recordings of their responses to questions detailed below.  I will not listen to any of the responses themselves, unless authorized to do so as part of the participant's submission.  For those that choose to be anonymous, I will use the visualized waveforms of their responses to deduce emotional and thematic material.  This material will inform the composition and production of the suite.

Once the composition and scoring is under way, I will work with local ensembles to put together a performance of the work.  Given the geographical of the project, this will likely be a local performance (somewhere in the Puget Sound region of Washington state).  This would be a public performance, the length of which would be determined by the venue, ensemble, and other logistical factors.
 

Would You Like to Participate?

If you are interested in participating in the project, please send your audio recordings to the anonymous DropBox links to the right (or below if on mobile).  Responses can be a single word or several paragraphs - it is entirely up to you!  All responses are confidential and will not be shared.  Please use the prefix "Listen" in your file name if you are not opposed to me listening to the recording itself (e.g. Listen_ZacM_Question1.wav).  Otherwise, I will not listen to the recordings and will only view the waveform results.

Near the end of May or early June, I will start a blog detailing the process I am using and the how the composition of the suite is progressing.  NO IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION will be used in these posts or videos.  Stay tuned, and thank you for your time!