Buzz Bike

The Buzz Bike is an extended design of the Sonic Bike made to enable anyone of any age or ability to enjoy sonic bike music. Gliding through outdoor space listening.

Buzz Bike is simply an extended cargo bicycle with 4 speakers around the passenger box, 3 bass transducers underneath and a 4th under the cyclists seat that play and vibrate new compositions to move around portable audiences as they go.

Buzz Bike protoype, built  from three discarded bicycles. With Nick Martin. Coventry, 2018

Buzz Bike also extends this adventure through eight audio channels and bass transducers mounted across the bike and under the box.  The aim is to give music to the cyclist and the passengers, not just through their ears but also through their bodies creating a delicious immersion on the move.

Kaffe Matthews & David Moorcroft at the Wheel Ways launch, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, 2018. Photos by Andy Moor.

Buzz Bike was designed and built by Kaffe and the BRI in collaboration with Nick Martin, Imagineer Technologies, produced and commissioned by Imagineer Productions for the Coventry Sonic Bike Opera, 2021.  It was launched at Wheel Ways, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in September 2018 and was developed after the success of The Coventry Pedalling Games 2016 and the design of the first ever Sonic Trike.

How it works:

Buzz Bike´s music plays from four mounted speakers, two at the front of the cargo box and two at the back, surrounding the passenger and playing to the cyclist.

The new vibratory aspect is created through four transducers. Two under the cargo box beneath the legs and butt of the passenger, the third on the sloping back and the fourth under the seat of the cyclist. The box’s base is built with 18mm marine ply and the sides with 12mm, screwed and glued so that it’s wooden surfaces sympathetically vibrate with the music and do not rattle.

The current design uses the same core hardware kit as on the sonic bike design, but adds on additional transducers, speakers and relevant powering to make an 8 channel, vibrating sonic experience for all of the riders and passengers aboard.

8 Channel Audio Configuration:

Hardware:

Bike Design:

The bike frame is a custom design made of three bicycle cut and welded together to create a reverse tricycle base, that the cargo box (aka the acoustic chamber) sits upon.

The handlebars are attached to the side of the cargo box, giving a unique new type of steering. And yes she’s easy to ride and turns on a pin head.

BUZZ BIKE PROJECTS:  During COVID, all Buzz related work was paused, but 2022 saw it brought to Europe for a commission for REWIRE festival, den Haag and a Berlin performance research experiment with local community.

Find out more here:     

 1. twenty two twenty two. den Haag, NL.         2. Corporeal Sky Music  Berlin.

Read the full making of Buzz Bike in the blog #buzz-bike