"Mass", 2022

Duration 64 minutes

14 channel sound system, spent bullet casings, speakers, brass bell and digital audio

Mass shootings are, for the most part, an American phenomenon. The generally accepted definition of a mass shooting is classified as a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed – not including a shooter – who may also have been killed or injured in the incident. The score for this piece is created out of data on mass shootings in the United States collected by the Gun Violence Archive and published on their website. It represents events that occurred from January 1st- October 20th, 2022*. Each movement represents a month with a duration of four minutes. The information placed into the score reflects the passage of time, the number of people wounded, and the number killed in each event. With those parameters in place, each part of the sound was designed to convey the frequency and intensity of events that occurred each month.

The U.S. government stopped providing funding to study and track gun violence in 1996 and only recently began discussions with the NIH and CDC on funding research again.

About the Gun Violence Archive:

GVA is not, by design an advocacy group. The mission of GVA is to document incidents of gun violence and gun crime nationally to provide independent, verified data to those who need to use it in their research, advocacy or writing. gunviolencearchive.org