ped

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. been to the states. 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 Ireland along with twelve Belfastians in Northern Irish taverns who had never been to the states.