Bicycle Built For 2,000

The title of this piece makes reference to a phrase from the late-19th-century American popular song Daisy Bell: “a bicycle built for two.” In 1961, the song was the first to be synthesized on the IBM 704 computer, and in 1968 the chorus would be hummed by HAL, the computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bicycle Built For 2,000 is available on line, where one can hear the song sung by 2,088 voices recruited via a website from all across the world. Having heard a fragment of the song, participants were invited to record their own version. These were then combined into a collective performance that is accompanied by an interactive graphic representation. Aaron Koblin is currently employed at Google Creative Lab. His collaborator Daniel Alfonso Massey is a freelance designer and programmer.