Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Picture the darkened spaces of a 1940s aircraft hangar, with an audience assembled around a specially marked out cycle track...

Around them are speeding bicycles with pedal powered sounds — everything from mechanical whirring violins, to beating drums at impossibly fast tempos, bellow-powered organ pipes, tuned car horns, DIY electronic instruments, a colourful selection of bells and buzzers, chain driven DJ turntables, and the proverbial kitchen sink!

Sometimes there is just one acoustic sound accompanied by the discreet lights of the bicycle. Sometimes there is a whole orchestra of bicycle live sounds, digitally manipulated in quadraphonic surround sound, complete with video and light show. Interactive sensors on the bikes and track determine other sonic and visceral aspects of the spectacle.

The Canberra Pursuit is a community-based grass roots project of around 80 specially hacked bicycles in a choreographed spectacle of sound, speed and light, based on pedal power and lasting one uninterrupted hour from 7:30–8:30pm.

All the bikes and most of the materials used in The Canberra Pursuit are recycled. This is an ecologically sound community event, made with organisations committed to the renewable energy of bicycles. These include LEAD, an agency enabling people with disabilities to live the life they choose, the Recyclery, a partnership between LEAD, ANU Green and the Canberra Environment and Sustainability Resource Centre dedicated to recycling and reusing bicycles, Tiny's Green Shed, ArtSound FM, the Melba Copland Chopper program and Rat Patrol Oz.

Creator, composer Jon Rose, is the recipient of the 2012 Don Banks Award which recognises sustained contributions to Australian musical life. Jon is one of the most inventive composers in the country and, often working in community, he stretches notions of what music is and how it can be made.

Get involved by making your bike musical, email canberra100@act.gov.au to get in touch with Jon.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

Featured artists

• Performance/sound art by Jon Rose