Rob Ray

Pedal to the Mental invites cyclists to become “disorienteers” using geographic and environmental queues of BIKE BOX geotagged locations as launchpads for wonder, confusion, imagination, and adventure!

Pedal to the Mental part of Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown's BIKE BOX open-source locative media bike project presented by free103point9 at Devotion Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Check out some of my locations below for some disorienteering of your own in Brooklyn and Queens. Also, for easy downloading, here's a zip of all the audio files and a .doc of the text (8.7mb). Grab a bike, load up your MP3 player and hit the streets!

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Start Here!

0. 54 Maujer St. – Devotion Gallery

Latitude: 40°42'37.58"N
Longitude: 73°56'54.75"W

View Larger Map>>Listen to the Audio File

Welcome! Pedal to the Mental invites you to become a bicycle-mobile “disorienteer” using geographic and environmental queues of Bike Box geo-tagged locations as launch pads for wonder, confusion, imagination, and adventure!

To Start: Get any of the Bike Box bits you'd like to take with you – such as maps, apps, water, snacks, etc. – and head to the corner of Orient Ave. and Olive St. so you can start "disorienteering!"

Directions to Orient Ave. and Olive St – Cooper Park

• Pedal north on Lorimer Ave. to Metropolitan Ave.

• Pedal east on Metropolitan Ave. a few blocks until you get to a one-way street called Olive St.

• Pedal north on Olive St. You will see Orient Ave. on your left. (You should see it pretty quickly.) This is where you'll start your disorientation!

Note: I'll be giving you a suggested location for your travels at the end of each of my Pedal to the Mental audio files - but feel free to chart your own path! You just might intersect with one of my locations on the Bike Box app!

1. Intersection: Orient Ave. and Olive St. – Cooper Park

Latitutude: 40°42'55.16"N
Longitude: 73°56'19.31"W

View Larger Map

>>Listen to the Audio File

Disorienteering Instructions: Lay your bike down on the ground and sit on the ground next to it. Get comfortable. Spin the back wheel, close your eyes and listen for sounds in concert with your bicycle’s spinning tire. Go find these sounds.

Next suggested location: Zigzag 1.3 miles NNW just past I-278 to Meeker Ave. and Gardner Ave.

2. Intersection: Meeker Ave. and Gardner Ave. – Four Views

Latitutude: 40°43'40.34"N
Longitude: 73°55'57.06"W

View Larger Map

>>Listen to the Audio File

Disorienteering Instructions: Bike to one of the nearby empty lots. Slowly pedal (or walk) around and around in large circles. How do the colors change as the Manhattan skyline, Interstate 278, Maspeth Creek and glimpses of Calvary Cemetery cross your field of view?

Next suggested location: 2.2 miles NW to Green St. and West St.

3. Intersection: Green St. and West St. – Picture Postcard

Latitutude: 40°59'59.79"N
Longitude: 73°57'35.36"W

View Larger Map

>>Listen to the Audio File

Disorienteering Instructions: Just west of this intersection is a ramshackle pier where many New York City skyline postcards have been photographed. It is still accessible to trespassers. Find your skyline view. How will your skyline look different in 10 years? 100 years? Transmitter Park, a former WYNC transmitter site, is just a few blocks south. What would you transmit from this site?

Next suggested location: 2.6 miles SW to Maspeth Ave. and Varick Ave.

4. Intersection: Maspeth Ave. and Varick Ave. – The Maspeth Holders

Latitutude: 40°43'04.93"N
Longitude: 73°55’3.84"W

View Larger Map

>>Listen to the Audio File

Disorienteering Instructions: Demolished by Keyspan Energy in 2001, the “Maspeth Holders” were the world’s largest natural gas storage tanks. The Maspeth Holders were known for their size, geometric simplicity and red and white checkerboard painted tops. During their demolition, the New York Times interviewed a KeySpan employee about the deconstructed tanks.

"'It's definitely art,' said John B. Nellis Jr., a longtime inspector of the tanks who is now helping to oversee their demise. Mr. Nellis recalled having to check the tanks daily to make sure all the seals were tight. 'I'm used to the inside and the outside of this thing being separate,' he said. 'Now we're letting the outside in. Soon the inside will be the outside.'"

If you were to create an artwork at this very spot, how might you let the outside in and bring the inside to the outside?

Next suggested location: A disorienteering spot of your very own! Where on the landscape do the see unusual colors, hear strange sounds, or feel peculiar terrain beneath your wheels?

"Reeling" is a looping video installation and the first of my "Weird Feelings" videos.

Anticipation is its own special euphoria. Pre-excitement for the actual excitement. It can be the best part of road trips, first dates, holidays and birthdays.

"Reeling" was created by cutting up an instructional bass fishing VHS tape into the classic fishing actions (casting, reeling, catching and release) then re-assembling the some of the most exciting moments.

I made a new video influenced by some thoughts I jotted down while at Jose Esteban Muñoz's recent lecture on queer futurity and his book Cruising Utopia at RPI.

Screened courtesy of criticalartware at BLOCKPARTY, the largest running North American demoparty, and at the NOTACON 2010 art and technology conference.

GET LOST! is a GPS and compass-enabled adventure I created for the Abandon Normal Devices festival in the Grizedale forest of the UK!

GET LOST! asks people to become "disorienteers" losing their way and rediscovering wonder, helplessness, and imagination using tools they would normally use to find their way. The sense of calm that comes from knowing where you are at all times can be reassuring, but also a bit boring.

Five hundred GET LOST! books were available at the park orientation and visitors center buildings. GET LOST! participants used the included compass (or their gps) and pencil to choose their own adventure through the Grizedale Forest.

I also placed GET LOST! books in pre-existing geocaching boxes throughout the Grizedale forest. Geocaching is a pretty good time, but after a geocacher reaches the destination, the adventure sort of ends with a thud. So I thought it would be fun to give geocachers something to do after they arrived and also have them use their GPS device in ways they never imagined.

Below is slideshow of the GET LOST! Flickr set from the festival.

The Space Between Two Lines is a small shadowbox I created as a visualization of the indeterminate area that exists between any two lines of thought — a place we seem to be quite stuck in.

Materials: Green Laser, Glass, Wood

Exhibited: GRIDSPACE, NY for the Reanimation Library - Feb-March. 2010

I created this piece for the Reanimation Library's "solo" show at Charles Goldman's GRIDSPACE in Brooklyn, NY. The space itself is a wooden grid of 12 individually lit 2 foot square by 8 inch deep cubicles, custom built to fit into the specially designed storefront.

The Reanimation Library invited a group of artists and writers to respond to one of the most intriguing books in its collection: The Rand Corporation's 1955 classic, A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. Each response fills one of GRIDSPACE's cubicles, with one spot reserved for the book itself. The also show features work by Anita Allyn, Jen Bervin, Christian Hawkey, Jen Hofer, Denise Iris, Tom Jennings, Katarina Jerinic, and David Levine. The show is on view through March.

Bucky's Animal Spirit is a public intervention disguised as an ATM Machine installed surreptitiously in a downtown office building... next to an actual ATM.

I installed this video game in a Troy, NY downtown office building on May 1st 2009 hoping people would think it was an actual ATM machine. I was quite pleased to see they did not want to punch my face off when they realized it was not an ATM at all, but an arcade game where they help "Bucky the Beaver" save money.

People were not only amused, they started telling their co-workers and by the mid-afternoon people were coming down just to play the game.

Earlier that day, a woman suspicious of my ATM called the building's management to check it out. They came down and were pretty amused by the whole thing and actually gave me permission to keep it going as long as I wanted. They even told me I should take it home at night as it might get stolen otherwise. Sometimes it really is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.

Public Interactions - from the iSight in the ATM and my video camera.

What Happens

A person inserts their ATM card into the machine expecting the typical ATM transaction screens. Instead they are presented with my video featuring Bucky the Beaver lamenting his financial troubles in today's economy. The user then plays a short side-scrolling video game, also created by me, to help Bucky get to the public library and dodge attacking satellite television receivers. The average American spent over $800 in in-home entertainment last year. You could save all of this money by using the public library.

This screen capture video is what the user see's upon inserting their ATM card.

Bucky's Animal Spirit - Video of ATM Screen Capture from rob ray on Vimeo.

Construction of the ATM

Construction of the ATM is pretty straightforward.
The Game Interface

• $3.50 panasonic card reader from AllElectronics
• an arduino to read when the card reader throws the "card inserted" pin high and trigger keys for "New Game."
• a gutted silicone roll-up USB keyboard controller. for the up, down, left, right, jump, and fire buttons.
• a mac mini with an isight for the game and camera recording functionality

Photos of the kiosk construction.

Canaries in the Coalmine
Release Date: 2009
Length: 12 minutes
Format: HD Video

Canaries in the Coalmine examines details in the American landscape to question the internconnectedness of desire and the intended and unintended outcomes of fulfilling that desire.

The Merits of Attentiveness
How do we stay observant to the details of our lives and how they amass?

The Interconnectedness of Need and Outcome
Our needs and wants construct the processes for their own fulfilment. What are the intended and unintended outcomes of those processes?

The Consequences of Permanence
How do we address the indelible consequences of what we do?
Under what circumstances, and for whom, do permanent consequences become less permanent?

Materials: Custom Engraved Silver Platter Chocolate Chip Cookies American Flag Napkins

Exhibited: VONZWECK at The BARN - Sept. 2008

----- Accompanying Text -----
The Chocolate Chip Cookie The chocolate chip cookie is a type of drop cookie created in 1933 by Mrs. Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.

The exact reasons why Mrs. Wakefield created the chocolate chip cookie are debated. In the Nestlé version of the story, Mrs. Wakefield planned to make chocolate cookies but ran out of baker's chocolate, so instead substituted bits of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate which did not melt and blend in with the rest of the cookie as intended.

Also in the Nestlé story, the chocolate chip cookie became a popular local care package shipped to Massachusetts soldiers stationed overseas in World War II. Soldiers from other parts of the U.S. sampled these cookies and also began asking for shipments of the Toll House Inn cookies. Mrs. Wakefield was quickly inundated with recipe requests and soon the chocolate chip cookie became very popular all across the United States.

The Atomic Bomb
The atomic bomb is a type of nuclear weapon first developed and deployed by the United States during World War II. Little Boy, a uranium bomb, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945. Fat Man, a plutonium bomb, was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, by the United States on August 9, 1945.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb. The project was originally named the "Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials" but was later modified to "Manhattan Engineer District" (MED) and nicknamed "The Manhattan Project." Nuclear technology was then developed by the USSR in 1949 and, when combined with rocketry developments of the 1960’s, it became possible for both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to deliver a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world. The technologies grandfathered by the atomic bomb have since proliferated to the United Kingdom, France, China, India, South Africa, Pakistan, and Israel.

- Rob Ray

PLEASE MAKE SOME!

Recipe: Use any chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Baking Instructions: The cookies will be easiest to cut out with a cookie cutter if you prepare and bake the cookies "pan-style" instead of "drop-style." This is done by filling the bottom 1/4" of a 9x13 baking sheet with about 1/4 of your dough.

Cookie Cutter Creation: Create cookie cutters in the shape or your favorite nuclear detonation delivery device. I find "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" particularly intriguing, so I used their shapes for my cookies. It is easiest to make this cookie cutters by bending a small strip of of 1/2 inch copper strap into shape. Copper strap is available in the plumbing section of your local hardware store.

What gives a place cultural significance? How does a place of cultural significance become publicly recognized? What happens as a result?

Undisclosed Locations is a series of interactive papercraft posters asking these questions of the Chicago populace. I frame these questions by asking the person on the street to consider the cultural significance of underground electronic music venues in Chicago.

Political Song for Justin Timberlake to Sing is a pair of electronically controlled low power FM radio transmitters designed to alert and confuse listeners.

The “Alert” Transmission

[listen to the 1min broadcast] The first of the pair, the “alert” transmitter, walks scattershot across the FM band from 88Mhz to 108Mhz overriding licensed programming with a computerized male voice. This voice informs listeners that US Air Force patrols have spotted enemy aircraft in the Capital Region of New York (this message can be updated to reference the surroundings of wherever the transmitters are installed). I reference the listener’s surrounding area in my broadcast in order to center, implicate and unsettle the viewer and give my broadcast legitimacy.

I intentionally interrupt licensed broadcasters with this one-minute “alert” broadcast. This interruption is designed to make listeners believe ownership of the transmission has shifted from a typical commercial FM radio entity to a government entity. Usurping control of local radio stations also personalizes the broader topics of militarization, fear and unknowing. Introductory beeping in the broadcast mimics a weather alert and interrupts the highly ordered programming of commercial radio. By interrupting the licensed broadcasts I also subvert the user-locked preset stations defined by the “scan” and “seek” interfaces of contemporary digital FM tuners.

I want listeners to be immediately engaged and be startled. My “alert” transmitters mission is to grab the unwitting participant and throw them into the piece.

The “Confuse” Transmission

[listen to a 1min sample from 12hr broadcast loop]
When the user reaches this second radio station they expect immediate information regarding their wellbeing. Instead, they hear an audio collage of experiences and information regarding bombing.  The collage contains peoples’ reflections on the fear experienced while being bombed mixed with pilots explaining what it is like to bomb. Also, peoples’ dealing with loss of property and loved ones as a result of bombing are mixed with scientific techniques used to try to make sense of bomb scenes. These are all things the listener would be forced into considering in the event of an actual bombing - but are acts that can neither be learned nor barely imagined without firsthand experience as a guide. We can only sketch in our minds what we think we might do based on what we know and our prior experiences. For most non-immigrant Americans, we know very little about this and have experienced even less when confronted with this new and seemingly real concern. We are thrown into a new open mental frequency filled with static.

After hearing the “alert” transmission, visitors may reach my second transmitter. I call it my “confuse” transmitter as this station is meant to capitalize on the alerted state of the listener and push them into a state of confusion and wonder. This station broadcasts my interviews with bombing survivors, interviews of US military bomber pilots and computer-read forensic investigation reports of bomb blast scenes. It is a simple fixed-frequency low power FM radio station occupying 88.9Mhz, an unfilled spot on the radio band in upstate New York’s Capital District (this broadcast frequency can be updated to best fit into the region where the transmitters are installed). I use a previously unoccupied frequency in order to preclude any local radio station brand affiliations and fill a fresh spot in the listener’s mind. 

This content of this broadcast also creates confusion of authorship, as it is not the type of transmission any governmental or commercial entity would put on the air. It provokes the questions “Where is this coming from?”  “Who owns this broadcast?” and “What am I listening to?” I cross the threshold of extremely ordered airspace and inject anomaly to create confusion.

A 24 page booklet (pdf) accompanies gallery installations of this piece.

Guilty Party
2002-2007
dvd projection, custom chromed baseball pitching machine, Colt 45 pistol, Colt 45 malt liqour, myspace photos, interactive electronics

Guilty Party
2002-2007
dvd projection, custom chromed baseball pitching machine, Colt 45 pistol, Colt 45 malt liqour, myspace photos, interactive electronics

State Champion Owner/Operator looks at peoples expression of thought and desire in the transient and anonymized realm of CB radio.

Format: DVD
Running Time: 12:05  

State Champion/Owner Operator examines the life of gay truckers through their own eyes and ears. It also examines peoples expression of thought and desire in the anonymized and transient realm of CB radio. This video examines the question “Who are we when we are freed from our body and identity?”

State Champion/Owner Operator combines two live CB conversations with a video of interstate traffic shot from the perspective of a long-haul trucker.  In the first conversation we hear various CB-er comments, questions, and threats made to a gay trucker. The CB radio’s ability to abstract location and identity enables CB-ers to converse openly about sexual identity and confusion.  In the second conversation we hear two gay truckers use the CB as a possible catalyst for physical interaction. The CB’s ability to connect distant nodes via the airwaves can also be used to connect distant sexual partners on the road.

Exhibited:
Interstitial. Art at the Salon.
Friday, June 15th, 7-10PM
Zhou B. Art Center. 1029 W. 35th St. Chicago

Transcript Exhibited Online:
Ausgang: Summer 2007 edition

A site-specific, telekinetic haunting created with Deborah Stratman inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker." Deborah and I transformed the gallery space into a traditional living room scenario. When users first enter they find nothing unusual then gradually strange things start to happen. The lights occasionally flicker strangely, sounds emanate from untraceable places, and a glass slides across the table.

A walk-though architectural sculpture incorporating found objects, sound, video and light,  depicting the possibility of a tornado frozen in time.

A collaboration with Tina Burton, Leslie Clague, Tyler Cufley, Paul Davies, Craig Miller, and Jesse Paul Miller

Exhibited: DEADTECH Gallery, Chicago - March/April 2002