PED is simultaneously a pseudo service
bureau and an info/excer-tainment outlet from which viewer/participants may
embark on free, talking-bicycle lecture tours. Each site-specific instance
of PED provides many different thematic tours, each with a specific route
to follow. Each bicycle is outfitted with a pedal-activated audio system.
As the viewers pedal they hear the lecture, and when they stop the lecture
ceases. Each 'lecture' is heard via small speakers mounted to the handlebars
of each bicycle. Each tour begins and returns to the PED service bureau.
Each route is marked with either temporary chalk-based paint or, alternatively,
signage.
PED service-bureau attendants 'perform'
8 hour days--encouraging participants, suggesting routes, maintaining bicycles
and keeping records. PED expands the parameters of performance by both
invisibly performing a service bureau and orchestrating viewers to unwittingly
perform (as they conspicuously ride through the city or locale on the talking-bicycles,
adorned with identifying helmets). Tours typically range in length
from 5 to 20 minutes, and cover a correspondingly sized area of the city/locale.
PED.Buffalo (April-July, 2001) was
the first instance of the more embracing PED project and included ten tours:
Safe, Natural, Comfortable, Convenient, Controlled,
Efficient, Spacious, Diverse, Civilized and Pleasant.
PED.Buffalo took place at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery and explored
pedagogical issues of guidance and control. It posed and answered questions
concerning the relationship between the suburban university and the decaying
rust-belt city of Buffalo as participants traversed bike paths running throughout
the 1200-acre campus, each tour with a different theme based on familiar
adjectives used in marketing suburban property. The lectures varied
in nature from the professorial to the sensorial, from the informational
to the irrational, and periodically disseminated details related to the passing
terrain--former wetlands that were paved over to build the campus.
PED.Belfast (December, 2002) included two tours: Economy
and Business/First each embarking from a temporary PED service bureau,
in an alleyway adjacent to the Catalyst Art Center. The content of the PED.Belfast
lecture tours was a recontextualization of the city's projected image contrasted
with its quotidian activities. Much of the marketing of a city depends
on creating a pre-digested, unified image and reifying stereotypes (albeit
for ostensibly diverse temperaments). Conversely, PED.Belfast explored
diverse subjective vantages within the living city through an analysis of
what should be seen/hidden, experienced/forbidden, known/forgotten, celebrated/mourned.
PED.Belfast's tours were narrated by twelve Buffalonians in Irish taverns
who had never been to Ireland along with twelve Belfastians in Northern Irish
taverns who had never been to the states.
PED.Chongqing
(June 2006, Chongqing, China) In this PED instance collective
teams ride custom audio bicycle systems--6 wheeled, cart-pulling, built
from salvaged bicycle parts, and powering hacked megaphones. Vehicles
capable of large-scale public address. These human-driven machines broadcast audio via
karaoke-inspired lectures, spreading information and entertainment in a
new/ancient society.
The three tours include:
1. The Long, Long Virtuous Path to Sunshine Vehicle
2. The Twin Stacks of Supreme Happiness Vehicle
3.
The Vehicle for Ten Thousand Fertile Scholars’ Star Rated Market
Approved Big Shiny Hot Pot for the Benevolent Ghosts from the Immortal
Mountains of the Healthy Valley of Plenty.
PED.Chongqing
was completed by an expanded PED team, including Warren Quigley and 38
students of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China.
It was realized in cooperation with the Chongqing 955 Bicycle Club and the International Long March project