I have titled my new art project Conversation Pit in romantic retro–speculation for the 1960s and 70s architectural phenomena of the conversation pit. Romantic because my knowledge of it is predominantly formed through Hollywood-mediated fiction; there was not a whiff of the conversation pit in my own rural New Zealand 70s era childhood. Retro – Speculation because I speculate lines of causality and influence in my retrospective view from the 21st century.

my retro speculation:

Occupying the small durational and psychological hiatus between the radical thinking of the 60s and the TV years of the 80s the conversation pit was a physiological and psychological acknowledgement of the intrigue, intimacy and downright sexiness of the shared activity of thinking and talking together. It was a particularly 60s/70s notion to embed such a space in the home and the fabric of living. The predictably sanitising 80’s response was to take them out again. I question, was such a reversal purely architectural or was it ideological as well; to restore clear demarcation between the realms of the sensual, the sexual and the intellectual?

You will need: a mountain bike, a go-pro, a pair of crutches, a box of assorted bike accessory parts, a few long bolts and a roll of gaffer tape for on-trail repairs.

Remove the arm brace from the crutch and put them aside, you will be using the main crutch pole for this project.

Select handlebar mounts to fit the crutch and your seat pole, joining the two together. Find a bold long enough to go through the frame of your bike and the crutch, and to go between two crutches. You can now bolt the crutch to the frame utilising existing holes in both. Now just bolt the two crutch poles together matching holes on each of the poles to set up your rink at the desired height. Attach your go-pro at the end of the top crutch, it may now be adjusted to record the ground directly behind your rear wheel.

Operating your rig

Set your go pro up; you may choose to record the rear wheel as it moves across the earth or you may choose to just record the earth itself. Should you wish to record your own breath as you pedal across the earth you will need to attach an auxiliary microphone, bear in mind that this will require a cable and an adapter. you will get tangled in the cable when you dismount and that the auxiliary microphone will compromise the water resistance of your camera. While recording you will have to ride very, very slowly if you hope to get clear footage. Because the camera is so close to the ground you will tend to get blurred footage even at 80 FPS. Stop and repair your rig with gaffer tape as required. For variation in footage, rather than repairing the rig allow it to drag behind you as you ride across the earth.

Later you can clean your bike, remove the rig and reassembled the crutches

The results:

As mentioned above, you have to go very slowly…. mostly I did not go slowly enough.

I also mentioned variation in footage due to system failure: in this of footage my seat-pole attachment failed causing the rig to drag behind me like a sled. it is the one section that does exactly what I was looking for, it traces a line through the skin of the soil.

the plan is to simplify the horse into two planes, enlarge it 20.5 times, cut it out and sew it together. Easy.

it will look like this

step one:

the camera lies: it is more fluorescent yellow than green.

tomorrow I am taking part in the very cool project that is Art Ache.

I am using this as an opportunity to share a number of works that should be on people’s walls, not in my art draws and at the same time to raise funds for the Red Cross Nepal Earthquake fund. 

Art Ache is the brain-child of Aimée Ralfini and is in its second year. Every two months  Aimée curates a group of emerging and established artist for a one night art-sale at the Golden Dawn on Ponsonby Road. The aims of the project are twofold – to encourage a new generation of art collectors and to give artists a venue for sharing works. For emerging artists it provides a much needed showcase and for established artists it provides a venue for selling works that may not exactly fit their dealer gallery mandate. At this point I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Deborah White of Whitespace for supporting me in this event.

I will have works priced from $40 so there will be something for everyone!

here are some examples of work that will be available:

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