The 10,000 Mile Bike Race
A Live Music-Film-Narration performance
April 16, 7:30pm

Part of Exploratorium After Dark
Thursday evenings mix cocktails, conversation, and adult-oriented programming on science and the arts

The 10,000 Mile Bike Race is a live music-film-narration performance adapted from a short text by turn-of-the-20th-century French author Alfred Jarry, famous for his scandalous play, Ubu Roi. The text is an excerpt from Jarry’s 1906 novel, The Supermale. The performance-screening takes place on Thursday, April 16 at 7:30pm as part of new extended Thursday evening hours at the Exploratorium in April that mix cocktails, conversation, and adult-oriented programming on science and the arts. Programs are playful, unusual, content-rich, and often involve cutting-edge media. Not a theater, not a cabaret, not a gallery—but involving aspects of all three—After Dark has a mood unlike anywhere else in the city. Where else can you find an intellectually stimulating playground for adults—with free parking? This event is included in the price of admission.

The story of The 10,000 Mile Bike Race concerns a fantastic promotional race between a five-man bicycle and a locomotive across 10,000 miles in Russian Siberia. The race is put on to promote chemist William Elson’s “Perpetual Motion Food,” which is the bike team’s only nourishment during the 4 days of the race.

A single narrator reads the tale of the race, which is told blow-by-blow in the voice of one of the bikers. A team of four local filmmakers provides intermittent visual illustration and accompaniment. The filmmakers are Jerome Hiler, Kerry Laitala, Paul Clipson and Bill Basquin. An eight-piece ensemble plays live music composed specifically for this event by local composer and bandleader Graham Connah. Konrad Steiner directs the production.

The performance lasts 45 minutes. The musicians and narrator are on stage, and the projection performance includes episodes of single-screen images and also multiple projections, the beams manipulated by three projectionists using beveled glass and other objects to contort and refract the imagery, filling the room with light.

At the same time that evening, the Exploratorium transforms itself into a carnival of amazing animal acts, astounding forces of nature, mysterious mind reading, and thrilling games of skill and chance! Within its walls lurk some of the most astonishing phenomena found in Nature—the biggest freak show of all. Witness the whimsical and weird! Behold unbelievable technologies and test science that defies common sense! Can cosmic rays from the edge of time really pass through the museum? Do animals have more complicated cognitive skills than we ever imagined? Discover some of Nature’s strangest curiosities at Sideshow Science, also part of Exploratorium After Dark on April 16.