Radio Free Banff presents Kelly Andres’ Songbike :: September 20, 2008; 10 am – 7 pm :: Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff New Media Institute, Canada.

Become a tour guide and take artist Kelly Andres on a one-hour bicycle ride of your Banff. Andres will accompany you with her mobile sound lab, Songbike, transforming your narrated ride into a unique soundscape composition broadcast live to the world on www.radio90.fm.

In August 2006, Songbike was presented as a concept for the Interactive Screen 06 competitive pitch session at the Banff New Media Institute. It was awarded a co-production residency to develop the project. Songbike traveled to Vancouver to participate in Video In/Video Out’s Signal and Noise Festival, April 19th-21st. Although Songbike was not fully developed, it provided participants the opportunity to create unique soundscape compositions based on specific bike routes in west and east Vancouver.

The concept of Songbike is to create mobile, urban, soundcape compositions to share through a website. The idea is that anyone can build a “Songbike” by throwing together whatever consumer electronics they can find to make a recording or broadcasting unit. Each time Songbike is performed it is different… never a prescribed set of components or objects. Songbike uses sound as a subtle activist gesture – narratives of current issues, noise pollution, the body extended, politics of space, time and movement arise through cues only available while listening.