BIKES

Adding Movement to Immersion

With BIKES we turn a fleet of four cargo bikes into a moving networked instrument for experimental music and sound art. Equipped with powerful PA loudspeakers, a computer and a touch interface, the bikes are designed to interact with our acoustic environment. In public interventions and installations, the BIKES aim at enriching, contrasting and challenging the urban soundscape and acoustics. The BIKES can be used while riding or taken to any location for immediate installation. This opens up completely new possibilities for composition and performance, while increasing accessibility and supporting alternative modes of transportation.

Interactive installation

The BIKES were shown in an interactive installation at the Spring 2025 Launchpad showcase of the School of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech:

Interactive installation at Launchpad 2025.

First Mobile Demo

We were invited to join the Inman Park Parade in April 2025. This was the first field test of the BIKES in motion:

The BIKES in movement at Inman Park Parade.

The Team

The Fall 2025 team at SITE.

BIKES Students:

Laura Sofia Call Gomez 
Jayson Faupel
Shirin Sathe
Jacob Westerstahl
Aditya Pawar
Gabriel Decker
Donald Buck

Project Coordinators:

Henrik von Coler (concept, artistic lead)
Orlando Kenny (tech lead)
Kevin Shankwiler (industrial design lead)

Past Members:

Julian Cunningham
Jace Walden

BIKES is a collaboration between Georgia Tech’s School of Music and the School for Industrial Design. The project is funded through the Arts @ Tech Catalyst Grant as Make Musik Mobile(s).

The BIKE

BIKES is a collaboration with Atlanta-based bike manufacturer Edison. We are using a limited edition of their newest cargo bike:

The Edison cargo bike without mods.

Our Industrial Design team came up with a modular mounting system, that holds the large speaker and all other components:

The first prototype with mounted speaker.

The Raspberry Pi with touch screen is mounted in the front, allowing the rider to interact with the system while driving. This picture show an early design with open wiring:

The wooden box accomodates all the technology the bike needs:

The Process

We got our four bikes in February 2025 and took them home from Edison’s workshop to campus - all the way through downtown:

Riding the bikes home from the shop.

In the first phase, the BIKES team has been working on mounting the bikes with audio gear. This is an early cable-tie-only solution for testing:

A mounted BIKES prototype.

Early experiments of the full network with four nodes in the lab:

The BIKES Audio & Music Team.

The music team explored different concepts to synchronize the bikes with SuperCollider via WiFi. This is a first test of the touch screen as a trigger for sound events:

Experimenting with a 2D Slider we built to generate sounds.