Sonic Environment & Sound Art – a choral movement with mobile loudspeakers

RAD Performance CITY OF NOISE places concerts from the field of electronic and experimental music at the focus of the artistic discourse and presents, composes and plays them on the road. The bicycle is the medium and source of inspiration for experimental sound compositions in motion. Different places and districts are visited and the city itself becomes a stage. The bicycle is the actor, the vehicle and the instrument. The concerts take place along bicycle routes, very often also in the outskirts of the city of Vienna, where visitors are equipped with mobile PA loudspeakers. RAD Performance enables people to experience the urban space of the city of Vienna in many fresh new ways through the bicycle.

The starting and ending points of the rides define the length and dramaturgy of the compositions: districts and their stories are just as much a part of the performance as the roads that the cyclists choose and the places through which they choose to move. Musical and performative concepts are developed with artists and musicians, as well as records labels based in Vienna: A choreography evolves, which consistently changes in the confines of space by the varying positions of the cyclists, moving through the city and dynamically integrating the surroundings.

The artistic team consisting of media artist Conny Zenk, cycle circle dance expert Petra Sturm and composer Veronika Mayer transforms drawings and graphic formations of the historic Radreigen* into tonal scores. *Radreigen was a popular form of cycling culture around the turn of the century, in which dance, gymnastics and parade elements were implemented with the bicycle. Cycling was practiced in gymnasiums or on squares all over Vienna. Original sketches and drawings of Radreigen arrangements are examined for their musical playability and are the source material for a graphic notation. The project attempts to translate these formation elements into experimental and electroacoustic music. Formal and linear structures have an effect on the music and vice versa. The bicycle serves as a transmission vehicle for this process. The relational play with bodies, formations, routes, bikes and music results in a unique visual-acoustic choreography.