Pedalling a vision at Harold Park

Everyone loves a movie night. But 2 upcoming film screenings at Harold Park aren’t your average lounge-on-a-bean-bag affair. Instead, the audience will be asked to help power the projector by jumping onto stationary bikes.

We chatted with Little Projector Company founder Lee Ramsayer Bache to learn more.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.

I’m from a film making background. I wanted to take cinema out of the cinema, and into the streets. We’re interested in storytelling that lives outside of a 2-dimensional screen.

We’ve got 3 multi-directional bike-mounted projectors, as well as projector backpacks that let us do multi-projection walking and riding tours.

How did the pedal-powered aspect come about?

We love cycling! Our projector bike rides are all about getting people out on their bikes.

But now we’ve built a true pedal-powered system, where your pedalling charges the battery driving the projector.

What’s the motivation for getting the audience to provide the power?

We want to show people how much energy it takes to generate power. It’s more about education and awareness, rather than simply power generation.

We’re also embracing the crossover between art, cycling and participation in public spaces.

How much power does it actually take to run the projector?

Quite a lot! About 350 Watts continuously, which is lots of pedalling, considering most people on the bikes will be producing 60 to 80 Watts. All that power goes into a battery, which means the whole system is carbon neutral.

Tell us more about the film nights you’ll be running here in Harold Park?

We’ll have 4 bikes of various sizes which will charge the projector. The projector itself is on a projector bike that sits amongst the audience.

How do people get involved?

At the start of the night, we’ll bring around sign-up sheets and people can put their name down for a slot, be it 5 or 10 minutes. We find it’s the youngsters who put their hand up first!