/

about

Doom and Gloom is a data-driven composition that explores the human cost of Ireland’s economic crash. The piece opens on a conversational montage from Finian’s Rainbow that offers an eerily ironic foreshadowing of the bleak and desolate future looming on the horizon for an Ireland that has lost its “pot of gold”. This discussion soon falls into chaos twisting and contorting as it disintegrates into a shattered ocean of broken and jagged sound fragments. This disintegration takes place at the same rate at which the Central Statistics office measured the decline in the Irish GNP (Gross National Product).
The timbre of the maelstrom transforms as material driven by the Unemployment Rate (Central Statistics Office) arises through the cracks between each sound shard. These new sound shards slowly reintegrate in time with the data contour to resolve in a young man’s discussion of his experience of unemployment in the post-Celtic Tiger years.
The piece is realized using FOG synthesis techniques (an extension of “fonctions d'onde formantique” to sound file granulation) and is intended to highlight the suffering caused by Ireland's economic crash through a mixed methods approach based on the sonification of economic data by compositional techniques.

credits

from The Human Cost: A Sonification of Ireland's Economic Crash, released May 16, 2016

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Stephen Roddy image

Stephen Roddy Dublin, Ireland

Stephen Roddy makes "quirky, odd, heavy" electronic music that is "big and bold" and "not afraid of taking risks". Stephen creates immersive multimedia performance systems which he uses in collaboration with other musicians, dancers, and sound artists. Some of this work has been described as “raw, rhythmic, primal yet playful” and “searingly powerful and a sheer joy to behold” ... more

contact / help

Contact Stephen Roddy

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

Stephen Roddy recommends:

If you like Stephen Roddy, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring guests Stubborn Heart and Portico Quartet.

 listen now