When: 6–8 / 11–15 Feb­ru­ary 2009
Where: Sydney

More than 600 cyc­lists hit the streets of Sydney as par­ti­cipants in Rider Spoke, a unique performance-based arts event by renowned UK multi-arts col­lect­ive Blast The­ory. Over a series of eight per­form­ances, mem­bers of the pub­lic were sent on a self-directed jour­ney through the city armed with a bike, wifi-enabled com­puter con­sole and head­set to guide their experience.

Rider Spoke by Blast The­ory | Photo by Alex Kershaw

Depart­ing from Sydney’s flag­ship con­tem­por­ary arts venue, the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art, riders wove their way around the stun­ning fore­shore of Sydney har­bour, through the lane­ways of the city’s his­toric pre­cinct The Rocks, and along the streets of the CBD to map an exper­i­ence of urban space that was both intensely per­sonal and overtly public.

Dis­rupt­ing the street as a place of pure transit, the work encour­aged par­ti­cipants to nav­ig­ate unusual paths and inter­act with an archive of voice record­ings along the way. Riders could take on the altern­ate roles of voyeur­istic listener or autonom­ous author – if they chose to record their own mes­sages for other riders to chance upon later – which pro­duced a con­stantly shift­ing set of rela­tions between par­ti­cipants that gathered momentum over time.

By recon­fig­ur­ing the medi­at­ing effects of com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­no­lo­gies and the way that pub­lics move through and inhabit an urban fab­ric, the work cre­ated a con­text for attent­ive spa­tial explor­a­tion and emo­tional engage­ment, essen­tially trans­form­ing the urban grid into a space of game play and cre­at­ive trans­ac­tions. Poetic, eph­em­eral and site-responsive, though Rider Spoke was only tem­por­ar­ily vis­ible as an inter­rup­tion to the fast-paced and util­it­arian rhythms of the streets, for those people lucky enough to take part, the work provided a whole new set of res­on­ances that will last well into the future.

Rider Spoke was presen­ted in Sydney by the Brit­ish Coun­cil and Sydney Har­bour Fore­shore Author­ity, in asso­ci­ation with the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art.

Did you exper­i­ence Rider Spoke in Sydney or Lon­don? Did it make an impres­sion on you? Have you exper­i­enced any other pub­lic works which invite you to use the city as your can­vas? Share your thoughts below to join the discussion.