Blast Theory (UK):
Rider Spoke
(Biciklis történetek)

Dates: 10-14 October 2008
Weekdays from 6 pm till 10 pm, weekends from 4.30 pm till 10 pm

Venue: Gödör Club

A cutting-edge experience: cycling is theater! Come and re-discover Budapest with Blast Theory!
While you cycle, lost in thought and your focus on the road, you see the streets of Budapest from a different perspective, that of an outsider, aloof and distant. Blast Theory invites the cyclists of Rider Spoke to re-discover the city and their place in this urban jungle, alone, but still together, linked with the help of new technology and limitless artistic imagination.
Rider Spoke premiered to great acclaim at the Barbican, London in October 2007. It is a work for cyclists combining theatre with game play and state of the art technology and continues Blast Theory's enquiry into performance in the age of personal communication. Rider Spoke invites the audience to cycle through the streets of the city, equipped with a handheld computer. They search for a hiding place and record a short message there. And then they search for the hiding places of others.
'The show's greatest gift is that it manages to embrace the remorseless urban rush of the City while insisting on the individual's ability to perceive it with quiet reflection.' Metro
'An extreme confessional which turns London's spectacular and squalid alleys into a theatrical backdrop for your own memories'. Time Out
'A great idea... Rider Spoke has the potential to animate a city'. Financial Times

Rider Spoke continues Blast Theory's fascination with how games and new communication technologies are creating new social spaces. It poses further questions about where theatre may be sited and what form it may take. It invites the public to be co-authors of the piece and a visible manifestation of it as they cycle through the city. It locates the venue precisely in its local context and invites the audience to explore that context for its emotional and intellectual resonances.
The audience can take part either on their own bike or hire one on the spot. Following a short introduction and a safety briefing you head out into the streets with a handheld computer mounted on the handlebars. You are given a question and invited to look for an appropriate hiding place where you will record your answer. The screen of the device acts primarily as a positioning system, showing where you are and whether there are any hiding places nearby. The interface employs imagery drawn from Mexican votive painting, sailor tattoos and heraldry: swallows flutter across the screen to show available hiding places, prefab houses indicate places where others have hidden.

Once you find a hiding place - a spot previously undiscovered by any other player - the device flashes an alert and the question. The question is one of a selection authored by Blast Theory that asks you - alone, in an out of the way spot - to reflect on your life. You then record your answer onto the device. Each hiding place combines two properties: the physical location and the electronic location as reported by the device and, for this reason, position itself is slippery and changeable. This is especially true as the University of Nottingham has designed and built a system that uses wifi access points to determine the position of each rider.
The other aspect of the game is to find the hiding places of others. When you find one the device alerts you to stop and then shows you the question that that person answered and plays you their answer. The recordings that people make are only available in this context: played to a player, alone, in the place where they were recorded.
As you roll through the streets your focus is outward, looking for good places to hide, speculating about the hiding places of others, becoming completely immersed into this overlaid world as the voices of strangers draw you into a new and unknown place.
The streets may be familiar, but you've given yourself up to the pleasure of being lost.

 

 

 

www.blasttheory.co.uk

Gallery

 

The performance is in English.

Tickets: 1.500 HUF (including bike hire, but you can also bring your own bike)
Tickets can only be booked in advance at the customer service of Budapest Autumn Festival. Limited capacity!
You can book for precise times. Slots available every 15 minutes for 5 participants.
Duration: 75 min

Important:
- For safety reasons, tickets for Rider Spoke are not available to under 18s. If you are under 18, you need to come accompanied by someone over 18.
- Everyone plays at their own responsibility.
- You don't have a bike? No problem, you can hire a bike on the spot. If this is the case, please let us know when you book your ticket!*
- We cannot guarantee that latecomers can participate in the performance later on. Please be on the spot 10 minutes before the session you have booked.
- In order to participate, please have a photo ID with you. You will also be asked to leave a deposit of 10.000 HUF for the console/bike hire.
*If you are less than 150 cm tall, you can only participate with your own bike!