blitzTag + Light Rider Boom Bike

This proposal is for materials & equipment expenses required for building a boom bike that will provide collective members and citizens with a reliable, cheap & effective method of contributing to visual culture in Berlin’s public spaces. GRL is an international federation of cells - from the USA to Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Austria, & now Germany. Our mission is “to outfit graffiti & street artists with open source technologies for urban communication.”

Our broad aim is to develop new technologies within the scope of collective process, civic participation & media empowerment. Specifically, this means providing ways for the public to access these technologies, & put them to use in public space. A huge step towards this will be the creation of a mobile broadcast unit: the boom bike.

During winter 2011, we plan to build a cargo bike that will allow us to transport gear & effectively ‘bomb’ public spaces with giant light-based graffiti. The bike will have space for a beamer, laptop, speaker & battery system, and will allow us to take projects like bombIR into city space, creating large-scale guerilla projections. With it, we will be able to hit several spots in one evening, without having to rely on external power or other location-logistics. The boom bike will be a sustainable, mobile, and participatory addition to not only GRL-Germany’s activities, but also the activities of several groups, as we plan to make the bike available activists, artists and other contributors to the diversity of visual and civic culture.

Funded by Berlin (June 2011)