Pink Team Trivia Night

Georgie Glover is the Captain of the Sydney Body Art Ride's Pink Riders. Last night she took things to a whole new level by organising a fabulous trivia night at the North Sydney Leagues Club to raise extra funds for the Children's Cancer Institute. The whole room was decorated in pink and guests wore cocktail dress "with a touch of Pink."

Sydney Body Art Ride has always worked by tapping into people's individual networks in order to raise funds and spread the word about our event. Georgie's event was a great illustration of just how effective this method can be. By getting her friends to use their personal networks of friends to fill tables for the trivia night she managed to bring together about a hundred people. Many of the people there had never heard of our event so the function raised awareness as well as thousands of dollars for the kids. Lots of people told me they were looking forward to taking part in the ride for the first time. We had heaps of fun too!

Even the poster had "a touch of Pink"

Each table had a musical instrument as their buzzer, we had bongo drums

The Hostess with the Mostest.

Playing heads and tails

Georgie imitates the wheel of fortune lady

Merryn and Georgie

SBAR Captains, left to right, Pink, Secretary Wendy, Red, Blue, Green

Jake (SBAR Event Manager) and Julie (Captain of the Greens)


Our MC for the evening (I think his name was Paul...) and Georgie

Start collecting sponsors

Now is a good time to start getting some sponsors. The new system is really easy. You go to this website Set up a page, then you email the link to all your friends. It only takes a couple of minutes. I set mine up this afternoon and in half an hour I'd raised $160. My sister is already up to $195. If we all do it we will raise thousands.

If you don't want to do it that way you can just collect the money, get the names and addresses of your donors and hand it all in to the CCIA representatives on the day. Charlie will put up a form you can use on the website in the next couple of days.

Don't forget the person who raises the most money wins a very cool Gofa city bike from Cheeky Transport. Details here

If you want to sponsor me just click here

Letter in The Glebe today

A letter from the Captain of the Red Team! Onya Cazz!

Article on SBAR

This article was written by USIL Postgraduate Student Sandra Ortiz who is from Lima in Peru and is currently attending the University of Sydney. She also managed to get it published in Cycle sport News

The Sydney Body Art Ride gets on the Road for the World
by Sandra Ortiz

What would you think if you see 300 people cycling around the streets of Sydney with just a helmet and their bodies painted? Do you know they can get thousands of dollars for being part of this ride?

It sounded very eccentric for me too when I first heard about The Sydney Body Art Ride (SBAR) a couple of months ago. However, after meeting Jake Lloyd Jones, its creator and organiser, it all made sense for me then.

Besides their full time jobs, the SBAR community members manage to come up with new activities during the year, so they can reach Sydney commuters’ minds and hearts.
Manly promotional ride
For instance, they have just created a new intriguing art project, called Bicycle Triptych, to launch it this November 6th, on the Road:Rode Exhibition in Newtown, as a preview for the original Sydney Body Art Ride that will be held on February 2009.

Road:Rode is the third exhibition, curated by Mitra Jovanovic, in At The Vanishing Point’s (ATVP) Emerging Curator Mentorship Program as part of the 8th Annual International Bicycle Film Festival Sydney 2008, which opens on November 1st.

Bicycle Triptych is a dreamlike, quasi-religious picture framed in three panels not unlike Old Russian Orthodox Icons. The work depicts the unique relationship between the cyclist and the road, drawing on the symbolism of gender as expressed by the French nouns for bicycles and road”, Jake explains.

“In one panel a woman painted silver represents “La Bicyclette” (the bicycle), in another a man is painted black as “Le Chemine” (the road) and in the last frame they both come together in a loving, harmonious balance of Ying and Yang”.

What is really SBAR’s reason for being?

The Sydney Body Art Ride is a non-profit community, which puts on an annual bike ride in order to promote sustainable living and to raise money for the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia. The ride encourages participants of all ages to cover their bodies in paint and ride as a rainbow to signify hope, commitment, and the connection of all living things.

“It all started as an experiment, one day I was sitting down in a meeting with some friends, thinking about doing something that could draw media attention without any publicity”, says Jake with that careless look and cheering smile that characterise him.

"We're promoting healthy sustainable living and the main focus of that message is to ride your bike to work instead of driving a car."

As Jake Lloyd Jones is a bike activist he came up with the idea of doing a bicycle ride, in order to promote cycling as a means for transportation and support Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s Bike plan.

Councillor John Mc Inerney is one of Moore’s independent team and explains that, “Sydneysiders already know the benefits of cycling – it’s good for their health, good for the environment and also good for their wallet. It’s also one of the fastest ways to get around the CBD”.

Getting ready to ride, the cyclists join their colour groups
Jake knew he needed to spice things up; otherwise it was just going to be one more of many other regular rides which people are used to and because of the low or lack of budget, it wasn’t going to be worthy at all.

Choose whatever colour you like best
Without caring about how this brand new idea would be digested by Sydney’s commuters and especially the media, he decided that all the participants needed to have their bodies painted and ride towards the beach as a human rainbow.

Riders march down to South Maroubra beach to wash off their paint
Not only is the project environmental friendly, it is cancer friendly too – 100% of the proceeds from the event are donated to the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia.

“When my first wife had leukaemia she was in the hospital of St. Vincent for a long time, and while we’re going in an out there, we got to know lots of the kids there and those kids are quite special people, they have a big impact on you when you meet them …”

Never have had organized anything before but his daughters’ birthdays. However, as he is as bold as brass, he trusted the cause and followed his instincts.

The first Sydney Body Art Ride was held on Australia three years ago, after a few months of an uncertain pre production period and some promotional rides.

Even though that Sunday, February 13th 2005, you could breathe excitement and anxiousness from the volunteers and the organizer team, Jake was still with that unique smile that could even make a child believe that going to the dentist is fun time!

On its first edition, the SBAR obtained $11,000 out from 183 riders, on behalf of the CCIA. Every participant left a spectrum of hope for these kids on the years to come.

Besides the fact that the first media coverage highlighted the “nudity” part of this event, the Sydney Body Art Ride left clear that its point is not about travelling through the streets as God brought us to earth.

SBAR 2IC Wendy paints a rider
Why to ride for?

It is more than that. It’s about promoting the establishment of off-road cycle ways alongside every major railway line, with the purpose of fighting global warming and getting fit, by replacing some of the regular car trips with bike rides.

It’s about raising money for the CCIA, in order to finance their scientific researches that might allow them to find a cure.

It is about bringing into life a visual art for social inquiry, as a human expression that appeals to people’s emotions.

Finally but not least, it is a group of “beautiful” people from every age, enjoying their freedom of expression, creation and even of choice – it’s up to you how much clothes to wear on.

Since then, this same phenomenon happens annually every February, with the exception of this last year when the SBAR team decided to take a break to chill out and recharge the batteries.

At least once, we all have been talking about global warming since a while, well now it is time to practice what we have preached. You may think this ride is too little to solve these problems but the most people believe the contrary, the faster and better effects we will get.

It is time to stop talking and roll up our sleeves! The Sydney Body Art Ride will be back on the Road on February 15th, 2009. Meet on the Physics Lawn at UNSW from 10.00am. BYO Bicycle, helmet, shoes and swimmers. A luggage van will deliver your gear to the beach for you.

Blast Theory's Rider Spoke

Blast Theory is coming to Sydney in February 2009 to present Rider Spoke at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Rider Spoke is a work for cyclists combining theatre with game play and state of the art technology. The project continues Blast Theory’s enquiry into performance in the age of personal communication. Developing from works such as Uncle Roy All Around You (2003) the piece 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 piece continues Blast Theory’s fascination with how games and new communication technologies are creating new hybrid social spaces in which the private and the public are intertwined. 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 is precisely dependent on its local context and invites the audience to explore that context for its emotional and intellectual resonances.

In keeping with much of the group's work Rider Spoke has a high threshold for the audience: you must be willing to cycle, alone at night, through the city. And this sets the stage for a very personal and intimate form of participation. Instead of "User Generated Content", the artists' have approached the project as inviting "Publicly Created Contributions".

A description of the work

The audience can take part either either on their own bike or borrow one supplied by Blast Theory. 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.

Locations

Rider Spoke was first shown at the Barbican in London in October 2007 and has since been presented in Athens, Brighton and Budapest.

Research partners

Rider Spoke has been developed in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham, Sony Net Services and the Fraunhofer Institute as part of the European research project IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming).

Silver Marshals Wanted

We need volunteers to join our team of Ride Marshals on Sunday the 15th of February. You would start at 9.30am and be finished by about 1pm. Please contact our Chief Marshal Mr Paul Johnson or myself at sbarhq@yahoo.com.au if you can help out.

We ride from the Physics Lawn at UNSW to South Maroubra Beach. It's an easy ride but we will have children, elderly people and a lot of less experienced riders to look after. The ride will be followed by first aid teams from St John's Ambulance and a light truck to pick up people who break down.

The aim of our event is to raise money for the Children's Cancer Institute, promote cycling and bring a bit of free public Art to the street. It's also heaps of fun. What we do is paint cyclists in groups of colour to form a rainbow on wheels that snakes it's way over to the beach at South Maroubra where we all march into the waves to wash off the (biodegradable) paint. Participants wear their swimmers. You can wear more than that if you like and just paint your arms and legs. Marshals will be painted Silver. Each colour group is led by a Captain and we need a couple of Marshals to assist each Captain. It's very simple, just a bit of corking at roundabouts and preventing your colour group form doing anything silly like riding through red lights.

We are also looking for people to help us distribute postcards and put up posters. Any help you can offer would be very much appreciated.

Monty Python: Bicycle repairman!

Wherever bicycles are broken or menaced by International Communism...