‘Sound of Sixteen’ opens with the Ireland’s first radio broadcast – a Morse code message transmitted at 5:30pm, April 25th, 1916. The Morse code beeps are intermittently punctuated by gunshots from two of the most prominent the weapons used during the Easter Rising (namely the Lee Enfield .303 and the Howth Mauser). As the piece continues the gunfire becomes more concentrated, until the sound design transforms into the sounds of the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising. The intensity of the piece builds to a crescendo, with the sound effects pulled back after a huge explosion. The Morse code is then reintroduced through a slight static, replicating how the broadcast was originally heard. The original broadcast was transmitted at a rate of 20WPM/1000HZ, and lasted eighty seconds. ‘Sound of Sixteen’ matches the original rate, thus making it the exact same length as the original broadcast.
