This proposal is for materials & equipment expenses required for building a boom bike that will provide collective members and citizens with a reliable, cheap & effective method of contributing to visual culture in Berlin’s public spaces. GRL is an international federation of cells - from the USA to Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Austria, & now Germany. Our mission is “to outfit graffiti & street artists with open source technologies for urban communication.”

Our broad aim is to develop new technologies within the scope of collective process, civic participation & media empowerment. Specifically, this means providing ways for the public to access these technologies, & put them to use in public space. A huge step towards this will be the creation of a mobile broadcast unit: the boom bike.

During winter 2011, we plan to build a cargo bike that will allow us to transport gear & effectively ‘bomb’ public spaces with giant light-based graffiti. The bike will have space for a beamer, laptop, speaker & battery system, and will allow us to take projects like bombIR into city space, creating large-scale guerilla projections. With it, we will be able to hit several spots in one evening, without having to rely on external power or other location-logistics. The boom bike will be a sustainable, mobile, and participatory addition to not only GRL-Germany’s activities, but also the activities of several groups, as we plan to make the bike available activists, artists and other contributors to the diversity of visual and civic culture.