Adelaide Pursuit – Tuesday 23 October 2012

Not the Tour Down Under set to music, but something just as exciting. A musical spectacle that will transport the community into a new experience and finish with a sprint to delight. Adelaide PURSUIT is a collaboration between Soundstream: New Music and Jon Rose, the renowned composer and architect of the Pursuit concept.

Victoria Square, Adelaide
Tuesday 23 October 2012

Imagine a huge darkened space. The audience is assembled at various key points around a cycle track. Around them and past them bicycle powered sounds move physically through space-time at different speeds. Sometimes there is just one acoustic sound accompanied by the discrete lights of the bicycle. Sometimes the live sounds are digitally manipulated in quadraphonic surround complete with bicycle mounted light show.

Created as a specially-choreographed spectacle of sound, speed and light based on pedal power lasting one uninterrupted hour. Bicycle musical instruments can be anything from simple clip on clickers, a range of bells and horns on the handlebars, to more complex constructions with wheel powered wind, string, or percussion actions – even retro-bicycle dynamo DC powered electronics.

Wireless transmission boxes link instruments and cyclists to a central mixer and quadraphonic sound system, offering more rotational speeds, sounds in contrary motion, and other options such as pitch shift and live sampling techniques to the pedal powered instruments. Close up images of the instrument mechanics appear on video screens beside the four speakers. Through an integrated MAX/JITTER system, live sound and action transforms the images into a synchronous experience.

So far the list of bicycle powered prototype instruments includes: violins, a viola, bellow powered organ pipes, a revolving bass drum, a DJ turntable, a plastic ukulele, the 2 metre high Grand Fiddle, the biscuit tin (the loudest instrument), the giant spring, the rolling pin, the plectraphone, the mobile cracklebox, the lawn mower, the mega clicker, the green pump, the front-end loading drum, the macaroni mixer, the red funnel, and the kitchen sink – transmitted to the big screen by the notorious i-bike which was fitted with accelerometers on wheels and handlebars and has been ridden by Australia’s very own Penny-farthing champion.

The first instrument was called, logically enough, the VIOCYCLE. It is a violin played hurdy-gurdy style with a small wooden wheel geared down to a suitable speed by a set of rollers and belts. A bowing speed lasting two seconds from frog to tip of bow (0.6 metres) was estimated and the gearing set accordingly.

Even at a test speed of 15-20 kilometres per hour, phenomena such as phasing, delays, and pitch shift caused by the Doppler effect, are clearly audible and stunningly enhanced by the acoustics of the space. As one can hear from the sound on this page, a Doppler shift of a semitone was recorded. The violin sounds pure and is about three times louder than a normally-bowed instrument. The next stage will be to fit guitar machine heads instead of pegs for ease of tuning and re-tuning while underway and to build a simple capo-style system for elementary shifts of pitch – anyone with a good ear is able to ride and play.

The second instrument to be tested was the PIPECYCLE. A range of diapason pipes and whistles were powered by a huge set of bellows bolted onto the back of the bicycle. Since initial testing, a wind box has been fitted with sliders controlling the airflow to a range of flu and reed pipes – like a simplified church organ mechanism.

There has been a transformation of many domestic objects into cycle powered musical instruments. (Not quite) everything including the kitchen sink has been applied to cycle technology. The Sink, the Rolling pin, and the Lawn Mower have all been subjected to chains, pulley ratios, and gearing mechanisms. The dynamics of the wheel has remained central to these experiments.

Perhaps the ultimate adaptation is the unique plectrafone (a cross between a huge guitar and a harpsichord) for use in the Pursuit.

The first presentation of PURSUIT took place on February 14th 2009 at The Performance Space (Sydney) and featured a veritable chamber orchestra of mobile, bicycle-powered acoustic musical instruments combined with the latest wireless transmission technology. PURSUIT 2 took place on January 9th 2010 at The Princes Warf, Hobart, Tasmania as part of The Mona Foma Festival. It involved over 50 members of the community as bike choir, bicycle bell orchestra, and bicycle instrument makers – an audience of 1,500 attended.

Soundstream: New Music, in collaboration with Adelaide City Council, will present this remarkable event on Tuesday 23 October 2012 in Victoria Square. Adelaide City Council is support this event as part of their participation in the Solar Car Challenge (16 to 23 October 2012). The race from Darwin finishes in Adelaide on Tuesday 23 October.