Grammy award winning artist Imogen Heap performed a new Heapsong that she wrote during the course of the event. The song titled Me the Machine was written and then performed live using just her hands through musical gloves. The gloves are a prototype musical interface that Imogen has been developing over the last two years with her team of engineers. With them, Imogen can directly interact and control a virtual orchestra by "utilising tens of thousands of unique motions".
Working with Julies Bicycle, Firefly Solar, Bluman Associates, Gaianova Geodesic Domes, Silent Gig and Sennheiser, Fruit Pie's mission was to produce an extremely environmentally friendly production using non grid power and emitting minimal light and audio pollution.
Kumar Kamalagharan, event producer from Fruit Pie Music explained, "This was an immense project with an exciting aim, which presented us with lots of challenges to create an open air live event to take place completely off the grid, whilst showcasing a prototype technology. The 23 cyclists, which were part of the on stage performance were in fact powering part of the stage lighting directly."
The build for the project began on 16 April and the final installations left the site on 25 April. Using a specially developed power calculator, it was estimated that in that time a total of 235.5KWh of energy would be used. Approximately 140KWh would be stored as solar generated energy, while 3.5KWh would be generated by the bikes. The weather predicted for the event was cloud and rain and as a result it was estimated that only 1KWh of energy was likely to be generated directly. The shortfall of 92KWh would be topped up by a biodiesel generator.
The actual energy used for the whole project was 230.5KWh. Despite the inclement weather the solar panels actually generated 60KWh of energy, with the bikes generating a further 3KWh. This left a shortfall of only 27.5KWh that the biodiesel generator topped up.
Kamalagharan continued, "I am very happy that we completely achieved what we set out to do and actually came closer than we imagined to running the whole event without using the bio-diesel generator. Only 100 litres of recycled bio fuel was burned. We had aimed to use only rechargeable batteries on any remote devices, which was the case for all our silent gig headphones and battery operated outdoor lighting. Unfortunately we had to concede to use a small number of normal batteries due to recharging time scales needed. These batteries were recycled after the event. On reflection it would only be a small step to have run the entire event completely on solar power."
Pod Bluman from Bluman Associates worked alongside video director Steve Price to supply all the video and camera technology so the gig could be recorded and broadcast, an essential part of helping to raise awareness of the issue and solutions this gig provided.
"This whole process started 18 months ago when we filmed Imogen at the Royal Albert Hall for her DVD. She conducted a 35 minute symphonic warm up performance called 'Love The Earth' which is where the inspiration for the magic gloves and a performance focused around this emerged from," said Pod Bluman.
The live gig took place inside an 18m diameter and 10m tall Geodesic dome provided by Gaianova, which was rigged and put up by hand and needed no electricity for its construction and deconstruction. Noise pollution was kept to zero through technology developed by a partnership between Silent Gig and Senheisser, which negated the need for power hungry and noisy audio reinforcement. So the gig took place in complete silence.
Firefly Solar provided the solar panels and bike peda
