Rebicycling from SOAR by Manuel Rocha Iturbide

For four digital sound tracks, stereo version 2001

Thousands of bicycles circulate through the streets of Tokyo every day. It is quite remarkable to observe their disordered behavior as well as the existence of great chaos when these locomotive vehicles are parked (many of them fall onto the ground, others end up being used as trash cans, etc). Yet, it is even more striking to discover that many bicycles are abandoned in the city. There is as a big mystery arising from this, do some people steal bicycles to arrive to their houses after having missed the last night train? Or, do people just leave bicycles on the streets because they will buy a new one? The truth is that in the middle of continuous and organic movement, there are many bicycles that suddenly stop their daily transit and stay parked for weeks or months at the same spot.
The police occasionally take some of these abandoned vehicles and pile them in a corner, or place them in a special bicycle parking lot, but in spite of this, thousands of bicycles are becoming trash in Tokyo. These transportation objects have a potential capacity of being used, and yet, they have suddenly gained a state of entropy, a state of complete and chaotic stillness.
First World countries like Japan, USA or France, are countries where people consume in excess and throw to the trash what would be fixed or reused in less developed countries. And then, in Japan you have the absurdity of law, which forbids people from taking and reusing deserted bicycles.
Natural living rhythm exists in organic life, as when we go to sleep every night, but then get up the next day to become active. However, what would happen if we suddenly fall into a state of coma? A clear drama is produced when we have potential stasis and movement within the same being, but one of the two stops working.
The end of this sound installation presented at the SURGE gallery in Tokyo, was to confront these two paradox states (still bicycles against moving sounds) trying to exorcize the entropy of these agonizing beings (the bicycles) and living them a new potential energy and the possibility of surviving. Also, we could think that these bicycles are eternally sleeping, and that the bicycle noises generated by a kind of energetic will be capable of waking these sleeping being.
Later on I decided to present another version of this work for concert situation with the same sounds in a 4 track speaker system but showing a video with images of abandoned bicycles that I have collected all around the world, instead of the real bicycles on the floor.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide is a composer, artist and writer. His creative work comes from different approaches to the sonic phenomena; from pure imagination, programmatic ideas, conceptual art, soundscape and experimentation with different sound objects. His interdisciplinary work has led him to use photography, sculpture, installation, and visual art as a complement of his sonic work.