YA SLIP TA BANG
SONIC BIKE WORK MADE FOR DUBLIN, 2017
KAFFE MATTHEWS AND THE BICROPHONIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE (BRI) WITH TEXT BY MIA GALLAGHER (GB & IE)
Ya slip ta bang is an interactive composition mapped over the streets of Dublin that will unfold for visitors as they ride 'sonic bikes' along specific routes of the city. Revealing the often ignored under-layers of urban life, Ya slip ta bang is created from the story of recovering heroin addict Lucy Dolan as she returns to the city, revisiting places relevant to her. With electronic music made alongside the text to nurture, counterpoint and surprise, the rider will discover different threads of narrative, building their own understanding as they go. London-based composer Kaffe Matthews has worked with Dublin-born and based author Mia Gallagher to make this new work as their first collaboration. The text is from Mia’s debut novel HellFire(Penguin Ireland, 2006).
The sonic bike is a bicycle with frame-mounted speakers that plays different sounds and music, dependent on where the cyclist goes and how fast they ride, via a mounted location-sensitive system. It is not an app, and it is free of the internet. It was designed by Kaffe, and is supported and developed worldwide by the Bicrophonic Research Institute. This will be Kaffe’s twelfth sonic bike work.
BIO
Kaffe is a pioneering composer and sound artist who works with things and places worldwide to make new electro-acoustic music for wide-ranging audiences. Violin, theremin, star maps, NASA scientists, sharks and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have all contributed to a growing body of work for sites such as concert halls, sonic bikes, public spaces and the human body. She received a BAFTA in 2004 for Weightless Animals; in 2006, a Prix Ars Electronica Distinction for Sonic Bed_London; and a Nesta Dreamtime Fellowship in 2005. She is an Honorary Professor of Music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, is the first woman to have received the Edgard Varése guest professorship at Technische Universität Berlin and has been releasing solo projects on Annette Works since 1996. In 2006, she set up Music for Bodiesand in 2014, she founded The Bicrophonic Research Institute. She is currently developing interactive sensory bikes and compositions for them, having made eleven international bike operas to date.
Mia is a novelist and performer based in Dublin. She is the author of two acclaimed novels: HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006) — winner of the Irish Tatler Literature Award (2007) and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016) — longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Award (UK, 2016) and chosen for the Irish Times Book Club in February 2017. Mia’s essays, reviews and award-winning short fiction have been widely published at home and abroad. Last year, she was guest-editor of The Stinging Fly’s special issue Fear & Fantasy. Mia was recently appointed as the 2017 Writer-in-Residence at Farmleigh House and has just been awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her next novel.