15 September 2008

University of Reading Workshop cont Exploring Rider Spoke Research in a different context

Drew When we were in Nottingham I talked with Duncan and Alan about their interest in documenting the experiences of cyclists that was our stake in this project there’s been some developments which might open doors for some new stuff With Future Sonic we’ve started a campaign to have a car free day in Manchester based on the Bogotá model where they shut 70 miles of road and 1.5million people came to the city

Gabriella Exeter is having a carfree day

Drew Really are you shutting all the streets? There’s been one of sorts in Manchester since 1999 but it was very minimal just handing round a few leaflets and closing down one road that no one goes down anyway basically after the Olympics the Uk cycle team is based in Manchester so we can say with only a slight smirk that Manchester is the centre of the cycling world wide and also they are introducing the congestion charge so transport is front page news at the moment in Manchester

Gabriella one thing I grew up with in Italy in the 1970s because of the economic crisis as a scheme called the alternative number plate scheme on alternative Sundays if the car number plate ended odd or even you could not enter the city that Sunday

Kate What happens if you have two cars?

Gabriella as you can imagine a lot of Italians would have cars with alternate number plates or just the number plates!

Drew Its very ambitious and would cost the council hundreds of pounds in principal but we are having a good shot at doing it we would like to trial things that could be introduced such as park and cycle schemes for example
Let me introduce Chris he is interested in the urban experience and urban planning at our Lab in Lancaster there is a lot of interest in urban design, technology and everyday creativity. We are going to apply to the EPSRC for a bit of pump priming money to work around the car free day so basically the aim is to do some evaluation before during and after and we were also talking about some longer memory stuff when people have had time to absorb and reflect on the experience So that creates a space to do lots of stuff, artistic interventions, one thing we'll be doing is putting a call out for artists people like the Royal Society Arts are interested in partnering they have 27000 members a lot of them in Manchester interested in social change through art a small fraction of them do autonomous interventions in streets, there’s this scheme called neighbours day where you can apply for a £200 pound grant to come into the city and have a picnic with your neighbours. Clearly there is opportunities to do research stuff how could some of the technologies developed be used to document cyclists experiences and inform urban planning. Cabe are also pitching to a number of cities to develop climate change awareness festivals if Manchester support it that would happen a few weeks after the car free festival and if any documentation from the car free day could be processed in time Cabe would be very interested in using it they are planning to work with about 200 schools so there would an opportunity to get lots of people involved.
We are very interested in have a conversation about this whether its of interest to people here to take this work into this other context and I do include Blast Theory here you know there’s a big space for artistic work, if it went through it’s a good argument to take to fenders also with a specific focus on replay of documentation could a power wall or cave be useful for this kind of context maybe not trying to be immersive but show the information in an accessible way

Gabriella mentioned UCL has done a lot of works around Euston Station to inform urban planning there is also a history of using CAVE for urban planning

Chris yes there has been work done at the Virtual environments lab at the University of Salford using the CAVE mapping the Blackcountry Leon is also very interested in that participatory process so there’s another layer of potential there involving cyclists and to be part of the decision making process

Gabriella I’m quite interested in the idea of cycling as a performance one of the things that emerged from the Rider spoke questionnaires was that people were interested in taking part because of the performative nature of the event they were describing themselves as characters in a movie they were performers on the bike and Rider Spoke created a frame for that

Alan somewhere there was an entire cycling culture group set up in the 1990s lots of people were interested in cycling performance in the 19th and turn of the 20 century lots of people were obsessed with uni cyclists etc

Julianne Blast Theory have been very interested in location based performance using the bicycle to move through that space

Gabrielle riding a bike gives you a very different mapping of the city compared to walking

Julianne There’s a cycling work in the Folkestone triennial that uses GPS to trigger audio it’s the most hilarious work because you have these huge speaker strapped onto the handle bars of the bike so as you cycle your knees hit the speakers then there’s the kit on the back that weighs about 10 kilos it was so clunky and because you were so laden with technology and you had this noise blaring out of the speaker you became an amusement for the people of Folkestone. SO that became quite performative

Drew I think the idea of performance is very relevant if your doing an event your closing the streets you want to alter people’s perception experiences of the street.

Created in collaboration between Folkestone Academy year 7 pupils and Kaffe Matthews, the Marvelo project is a sound collage made for bicycles to be performed by visitors to the Triennial. The Marvelo group explored routes of Folkestone, mapping personal histories within the context of the town. New sound pieces have been scored from their stories and encounters and from marking and drawing on local maps, all of which replace notes written on a traditional musical stave. The resulting 'opera' is to be experienced by cycling on specially adapted bikes housing a GPS tracking system, computer and two speakers. The cycling participants become performers of the opera and passers-by accidental audience members.

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