Weeks Feel Like Days, Months Feel Like Years is a participatory audio artwork by Paul Walde in which performers are invited to interpret a series of five text-based scores that prompt responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Walde’s experience in isolation during COVID-19 and its effect on perceiving time as expanded or compressed are the organizing principles in these compositions.
A form of experimental music notation, text scores prompt individuals or groups to “perform” responses as reflections on personal experiences during the pandemic. To contribute to this generative work, participants record their responses to the prompts using an online interface on their computers. Walde then compiles the recordings into larger audio compositions, blending layering and temporal effects, such as time stretching and compression using a different customized computer program for each score.
Generative in nature, there is no fixed final version of the audio pieces, with multiple iterations issued potentially through the end of the pandemic.
Learn more about Weeks Feel Like Days, Months Feel Like Years, listen to audio works, and contribute a recording. Museum visitors may also experience this project in the atrium as an audio and video installation.
