The Stock Ticker in Times of Change

May 23, 2020, 01:06 PM

Piece based on stock ticker by Jukka-Pekka Piimies. 

"The stock ticker has an interesting relation to time: as a machine, it revolves at a set pace, but the events that it stamps in the ticker tape are more random in the short term. 

"In addition to the momentary pulse of the stock market, you also have the cyclical ebb and flow of the real economy. You do not know at any single moment to what extent the real economy drives the financial world. 

"In my composition, I try to capture glimpses of the mechanical and the informational; the real economy juxtaposed to the virtual one. 

"I reconstructed one 'stock ticker' instrument out of typewriter samples played through a virtual drum machine following polyrhythmic instructions. A telegraphic printer and other industrial sounds from http://www.soundsofchanges.eu/ (Creative Commons licence) were treated to provide more themes, variations and 'countermelodies'. The NYSE bell competes with the foghorn."

Part of the Smithsonian Treasures project, a collection of new sound works inspired by items from the Smithsonian Museums’ collections - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/smithsonian