Mess & Noise Bike Fest – curate a night of bands for the upcoming Bikefest #Melbourne #festivals

Mess & Noise:
http://www.messandnoise.com/news/4117764

Bike Fest website:
http://www.melbournebikefest.com.au/

See bicycle parts, frames and components transformed from their typical functionalities into works of art. The Circular Bike comprises donated bicycles from Monash University’s Uni-Cycle bike share scheme. The bikes have been deconstructed from their singular bike form and reassembled to create a single, circular structure that can be ridden and enjoyed by many.

Contrasting the traditional chandelier with the functional form of the bicycle wheel, the Bicycle Chandelier merges the mechanical with the decorative to create a suspended work of art. Created using lights, wheels and aluminium rims donated by Velocity Wheels.

Fest runs (cycles through to): 25th – 28th November, 2010

Gerry Gafney reviews the recently launched #Melbourne #bicycle share scheme #geekgirl

Recently Melbourne launched a bicycle share scheme. The uptake so far has been low. There have been suggestions that this is due, at least in part, to the launch taking place in winter.

However, an important factor is that in Australia it is mandatory to wear a helmet when cycling, and the scheme does not provide helmets. The first photograph contains, to my mind, both question and answer. The tag is “Short trip? Why not take a bike?”. At the bottom right is a “safety first” image of an encased head, showing precisely why it is inconvenient to take a bike for that short trip.

I don’t want to join the debate about whether bicycle helmets should be mandatory, but for those not familiar with the debate, it can be summarised as follows:

Advocates of mandated helmets state that individual cyclists are offered some protection in the event of an accident. Opponents point out that cycling rates go down when helmets are made compulsory, that accident rates increase when cyclist numbers decrease (essentially because more cyclists leads to better awareness among drivers as well as better socialised behaviour by cyclists themselves), and that significant health benefits to society are accordingly sacrificed when fewer people ride. At the end of the page there are some links you might want to follow, but let me warn you in advance that the topic is muddy, and that there is considerable vehemence on each side.

In any case, I was in Melbourne for a day to listen to Mikael Colville-Andersen, a Danish film-maker and photographer who runs an extremely popular cycling blog called Copenhagenize, and whom I interviewed recently for the User Experience podcast. He was in Melbourne as part of Victoria’s “State of Design” festival.

More:  Short trip? Why not take a bike?

HiGH ViZ Vogue – Bike #Fashion Jam #Melbourne #bicycles

DIY cycling gear workshop to keep the cops and the fashion police happy

11:00 – 13:00
Saturday 19 June 2010
Coburg Library
Cnr Victoria & Louisa Streets, Coburg

Craft Cartel, alarmed by sights of fluoro lycra clad cyclists and equally aghast at the thought of coming a cropper while partaking in our favourite form of transport, are proud to present a solution: High Viz Vogue, a DIY bike fashion workshop.

This event, part of the Moreland City Council Coburg Carnivale, invites members of the public to adapt helmets and other clothing bits they’d like to make roadway and catwalk friendly, or to start from scratch using supplied materials. Local designers Miss Viz will be on hand to provide guidance and there will be displays of innovative bike fashion solutions such as designer Ann Maher’s ‘biker bustle’.

The event will culminate in a fashion parade with prizes supplied by Crumpler and will be followed by a celebratory ride through Moreland to parade the new hip gear led by Sugar Spokes all female bike crew.

“We don’t think riders should have to choose between having a sore body and being an eye-sore,” says Cartel co-founder Casey Jenkins, “You can look hot while you’re cycling and still keep yourself safe, we’re going to show you how.”

Free! No experience necessary! All materials supplied. Ace prizes to be won.

Produced by Ann Maher, Rahne Widarsito & Casey Jenkins

Media contact: Casey Jenkins, casey(at)craftcartel(dot)com ph.0439 354 560

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Melbourne Craft Cartel
www.craftcartel.com
for crafty types who don’t dig rose-scented doilies

Bike Polo #Melbourne

The Bike Polo crew have been playing in Melbourne for just over 2 years, in vacant car parks and on disused basketball courts, even under freeways.  The crew play every Tuesday evening and Sunday afternoon, basically anywhere they can find an enclosed space that’s large and flat enough.

You could say they’re at the same place skate boarders were before there were skate parks, and when people were making equipment themselves.

The Bike Polo crew make their mallets out of old ski poles and plumbing pipe and use street hockey ball and traffic cones for goals.

They ride whatever bikes that they used to get around town, but the more we play, the more we realise we’re spending more time on the court, than on the street, hours and hours at a time, and late into the night, (if we can find a place with lights).  We lower our gear ratios and seats, put protective discs on our wheels and even cut our handlebars short on one side.

Groups like the one in Melbourne have started up in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide, and more recently, Castlemaine and Frankston have started up too. Sometimes we play against each other.

World Naked Bike Ride – Australia

At least 7 Australian towns and cities will participate in the next southern hemisphere leg of the World Naked Bike Ride in March 2010. More cities may be added to the list if volunteers are found to organise the ride in new towns and cities. The official southern hemisphere ride date is Saturday 13 March 2010.

The dates and locations are:

Saturday 13 March 2010: Sydney and Adelaide
Sunday 14 March 2010: Newcastle
Sunday 21 March 2010: Canberra and Melbourne

WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDE MELBOURNE 2010
The Union Club Hotel, 3:00pm – 8:00pm

Corner of Gore and Webb Streets FITZROY, Melbourne

http://wiki.worldnakedbikeride.org/wiki/Australia

The Melbourne Bicycle Film Festival x

To promote Melbourne as a city for cyclists, The Melbourne Bicycle Film Festival are looking for films up to 1 minute long that promote road harmony between all users. The films must contain a recognisable City of Melbourne location, feature cyclists wearing helmets, using a bell and contain one of eight scenarios that represent barriers to road harmony.

First prize is $1000 and a $250 voucher from Open Channel and the use of the clip by the City of Melbourne as part of their safe cycling campaign. Short listed entries will be screened before Bicycle Film Festival sessions at the Palace Kino Cinemas 26 – 28 November.

Visit www.ambiguoushorse.com for more information.

Bikes Move Us

(BMU) is a growing community of like minded individuals who share a passion for bikes whether it’s fixies, mountain bikes, single speeds, BMX, road bikes, recreational riding, excercise, modifying or racing.

Website:
http://www.bikesmoveus.com

Bicycle as a metaphor of change in China – exhibition

CHINETIK
Closes APRIL 19 2009
The project CHINETIK has picked nineteen Chinese street bicycles and shows them unaltered, with their original wares – coal, cooking pots, litter, etc., as sculptural works in a different cultural context. These authentic articles of daily use thus acquire the basic characteristics of objets trouvés, though with the difference that they are not integrated into an artwork but themselves become independent works of art.

Changes at a frenetic pace
When talking about China’s development from an agrarian society into a global economic power, figures usually are more expressive than words. After the long period of self-imposed isolation, more than 400 million human beings today in the Middle Kingdom communicate by cell phones – when, barely ten years ago, the majority of 1.3 billion Chinese only knew of the telephone by hearsay. 1300 new cars are registered daily in Beijing, 2 million motorised vehicles congest the streets of the capital every day, changing the cityscape and the quality of its air. Within ten years, according to conservative estimates, 130 million cars will be driving on China’s roads. There are still 540 million bicycles in China, the former nation of cyclists. At some time in the near future, cars will gain the upper hand over cyclists on roads in China. The realities of daily life in China are changing at a frenetic pace, with a loss each new day to ordinary Chinese culture

The end of bicycles?
The pace of change is too rapid to keep up with it by bicycle. Barely thirty years ago, the bicycle embodied the progress from the relative static ox driven cart toward greater mobility and, in a small measure, toward the freedom afforded by increased mobility. In the 1970s, the bicycle was a status symbol in Chinese society. In order to obtain a bicycle, one had to have a coupon, and coupons were distributed by draws. Moreover, the owner of a bicycle had the opportunity to engage in trade and commerce. Tricycles served as mobile kitchens, for the transport of coal, as repair shops, stores or for the removal of refuse. Served – since bicycles and the culture surrounding them are disappearing from the urban scene in larger Chinese cities such as Beijing or Shanghai. One does still see them, but not in great numbers, and bicycles now bear the stigma of a passing era. They are becoming symbols of change, museum objects, a retrospective on wheels.

Bicycles as works of art
The misappropriation of the bicycle causes tension and a frictional interface that becomes a metaphor and stands for change. Against the backdrop of frenetic modernisation CHINETIK is a meaningful artefact, a vehicle for change and contrast. CHINETIK creates its own object language that is not the language of the marketplace. In the western world, on the contrary, industrialised nations are intensifying their search for alternative forms of energy. For the exhibition, 14 artists (Guillaume Bijl, Daniele Buetti, Franz Burkhardt, Stephen Craig, Gao Lei, Peter Knapp, Job Koelewijn, Peter Kogler, Mu Bo Yan, Robert Rauschenberg, Ulrike Schröter, Michael Vessa, Thomas Virnich, Xiao Yu) have been commissioned to re-think “Chinese” bicycles that are exhibited alongside the original ones. Through this transformation, the bicycles are disconnected from their real function and find their way into modernity.

Illustration:
Thomas Virnich  (*1957, De), Vehicle in its flowery silk corsage, 2008 / 2009

Tinguely museum