Category Archives: partnership

Movable Party Powers Happiness at Dance la Via

October 9, 2014 – 2:25 pm

Our second collaboration with Stupid Company and the Bodacious Bike Babes, DanceLAvia was quite possibly our best event yet!

FB_IMG_14125349888074429

Mayor Eric Garcetti came by for a photo-op with the Bike Babes, and when informed of the source of electrical energy for our little dance party said “That’s awesome.” We agree.

The BBBs came out in force, equipped with sparkly hotpants and miniskirts:

IMG_20141005_114815_1

And I caught the duo that is KnotworkLA dancing while generating power:

IMG_20141005_120501

The system performed beautifully, enabling CicLAvia guests to produce 733 Watt-hours of clean energy, of which 630 was used for music, meaning that we used none of the power generously sold to me by the DWP the night before. Great job CicLAvia!

As usual, our best customers were the ones too small to fit our bikes (a kid’s bike with generator will be coming soon!)

IMG_20141005_142200

Permalink | Comment (0)
community event partnership

#MovableParty 1.1 @ NELA River Bike + Walk Spectacular

April 19, 2013 – 12:37 pm

We will be performing with our system a community ride event — River Bike + Walk Spectacular — next week. We plan to use our newly built interactive. We will power a couple of DJ sets using our newly built interactive bike-powered DJ system.

NELA Bike + Walk Spectacular

The Northeast Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative invites you to the

River Bike & Walk Spectacular

When: Saturday, April 27th, 4-10pm.

Location: Marsh Park, 2960 Marsh Street, Los Angeles, CA 90039

4pm: Bike & Walk: Explore the river and its neighborhoods via the L.A. River Greenway Trail, and participate in a live mapping project.

6pm: Community Fair at Marsh Park: Enjoy art and educational activities, bike-powered music, and learn more about the NELA RC and other community organizations.

8pm: Bike-in Movie: Enjoy a free outdoor screening of Beetlejuice in the park. Bring blankets!

Brought to you by the NELA RC in collaboration with Multicultural Communities for Mobility, LACBC, and Movable Parts.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/627773783904734/

 

Permalink | Comments (2)
community generator partnership workshop

Workshop #1: Generator & Hub Motors

March 6, 2013 – 5:54 am

Bikes with Hub Motors

We’re excited to announce the first of our workshop series for Movable Party. In this workshop, we will be fitting the bikes with hub motors and testing their electrical output. We will talk more generally about the laws of physics related to electricity, and compare the results of two different hub motors.

Place: Bike Cage at Oxy [southwest corner of the Rangeview parking garage, come through the gate and turn right]

Time: 5:30pm, Friday March 8

The workshop will last no more than 90 minutes. We will have some pizzas! Please let me know via email [hsuw at oxy dot edu] if you’re coming, so I can make sure that there will be plenty of food for everyone.

We’re excited about moving our project forward. Come and prepare to get your hands dirty!

Permalink | Comment (0)
partnership place

Movable Party Toward the Beach!

February 26, 2013 – 6:35 am

Movable Parts held an organizing meeting at the Bike Cage with students of Occidental’s Bike Share last Friday. In conversation we debated about the actual route of CicLAvia this April noting that we’d seen “somewhere” that it will go to Venice. In an attempt to recover a map beyond my hazy memory of one of thousands of Facebook posts, tweets, and emails, I searched the CicLAvia website (to no avail), found blog posts that discuss preliminary information about the route, and then finally landed on it at CicLAvia’s Facebook Page where it was released that same Friday (2/22).

CicLAvia Route Map from LA Street's Blog
CicLAvia Route Map from LA Streets Blog

The map indicates a route from Union Station to Venice Beach via Main, 6th and 7th, Figeroua, and finally Venice with a barebones post: “Map of the Venice Boulevard route for the April 21, 2013 CicLAvia. Participants will be able to access the route from many entry points and travel the route in either direction.” The LA Streets Blog announced it the previous Thursday and gives us more context: The new route asserts the ability for bikes to “cross the east-west divide” and earlier LA Streets Blog reported, the route is part of an overall strategy to develop routine monthly routes (e.g., April is the Venice ride).

**I also learned from LA Streets Blog that there will be a June CicLAvia. Yay! We’ll bring the movable party.**

 

 

Permalink | Comment (0)
funding partnership

Support from Oxy Sustainability Funds

February 25, 2013 – 11:37 pm

Occidental College Seal

We are thrilled to announce that our bike-powered music project will receive funding from the Associated Students of Occidental College’s (ASOC) Renewable Energy and Sustainability Funds. We proposed our Movable Party project as an opportunity for students (from my MUSI112 Digital Music-Cultures class and self-selected student volunteers) at Oxy to work alongside community artists and engineers to construct a human-scale system of power and interactive robotics. Our proposal details the learning goals of project:

This project provides a set of unique learning contexts that focus on applied knowledge, collaboration, and community engagement. Student participants will work under the guidance of community artists, advocates, and professionals in a multidisciplinary project-based environment. Specifically, they will gain hands-on experience of fabricating a complex bicycle-powered generator and components of interactive robotics from raw materials, from design to finish. This experience is particularly valuable at a liberal arts college where engineering and design courses are not offered. In addition, this project provides an access point for Oxy students to engage with local communities while acting as arts and bicycle advocacy partners. This partnership should empower the students to make decisions that would yield a positive impact in the community, beyond campus life.

With the funds, we will purchase the components for building the pedal generator (hub motors, battery, power regulator, copper wire, etc), and the interactive part of the system (sensors and Arduino microcontrollers). Our plan is to gather all of materials this week and start hosting workshops on and off campus throughout the month of March. Fabrication workshops will take place on campus at the Occidental Bike Share/Bike Cage, and off-campus at The Knowhow Shop, a design and fabrication studio and co-op in Highland Park. The specific time and place of workshops will be announced on this website and through Oxy-related channels.

Besides the launch at Ciclavia on April 21, 2013, we are in the process of planning an on-campus launch to raise awareness for green energy and sustainability and introduce our system to the grater Oxy community.

Making this project educational is among our top priorities. We’re excited to work with Oxy to demonstrate the capacity of human-powered energy through creative practices.

 

 

Permalink | Comment (0)