Movable Parts is a collective of artists, musicians, designers, technologists, and community organizers with a shared mission to deploy creative practices to re-imagine the streets and public spaces of Los Angeles. Inspired by our research on global street cultures, our efforts augment the spatial and social flow of the public sphere at a human scale in the globalized city of Los Angeles.
We promote communalism and believe in the power of pedagogy. We make available our design, implementation details, and other project-specific knowledge through workshops and online documentation. We make and transform materials ranging from the cultural and embodied, to the mechanical and computational.
We have created Movable Party, a mobile bicycle-powered DJ and Arduino interactive party machine. Inspired by Nakashi, an itinerant musical practice rooted in Taiwan’s street culture, we take a “high-tech, low-tech” approach to construct a human-scale generator. Movable Party relies on audience participation to provide electrical power for the performance. In each iteration, three to four bicycles, fitted with generator hubs, stand to the side of the stage. A power conditioner combines the power output generated by each bike and converts it to clean, green, AC power for our sound equipment.
We also made Movable Karaoke, a karaoke pedicab that we custom built to amplify creative responses to collective mobility in Los Angeles. We staged stage a series of participatory karaoke events through the streets and at transit hubs such as metro stations, bus stops, sidewalk, parklets and plazas. Through song performances and interviews, ride-sharers and commuters participate by sharing songs and experience to built an alternative mobility culture in LA. This project was funded by Metro LA.
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Credits
Umi Hsu: concept, design, fundraising, strategic partnership
Lindawei: concept, design, and build
Joseph Taylor: design and build, engineering
Steven Kemper: interactive media design
Ashle Fauvre: illustration and spatial planning
Jacob Alden Sargent: strategic partnership
Lam Vuong: logo, graphic design
Rounak Maiti: video documentation