Bi-spoke Tempo

Lack of spokes makes a bike wheel speak volumes about time

Before and After

This is what i do for a day job. 

                                                    

                            Before
                                     

                             In between

                          And after

                           

Watchmaker in Rome

https://vimeo.com/102576980

Roman chapters: Via sella Stelletta

Picking up on the thread I lost (and found 10,200 km away in a sunny corner of the US)  this video produced by a couple of friends of mine is a couple of minutes of my lab in Via della Stelletta Rome.
The lab that hosted automat production, watch restoration and music studio recordings.

https://vimeo.com/102576980

                                    Tin Pinocchio automoton


Made out of all recycled materials: bicycle wheel, beer can (Pinocchio, moon and fish), various bicycle parts and an old swiss musical carillon.

It's actioned by pressing on the bike bell which in one push winds the carllion.
Once the carillon starts playing music the meccanism also pulls strings attached via a series or perspex cams making the Pinocchio makes a threading in water movement

Made in collaboration with Marta Cavicchioni.

The concept of this work could be best explained by Marta whose idea is behind it, but could be assumed in poor man’s words by the following: it comes from playing with the theory that man/woman is born the moment he or she upon leaving the womb at birth receives his/her first image once light hits the retina and is from then on able to create images of his/her own and finally be the unique person that’s just been born.
A first crucial step in a lifetime of seeing, feeling, hoping, imagining and creating and being the person with no equal who’s fantasy is identical to none.

In this piece the colourful retina, painted by Marta on thin rice paper and then mounted on a bicycle wheel, emits light with the help of the observer who, once giving the wheel a spin drives a mechanical train which then drives a dynamo which then lights up the retina from behind. A different image is created every time the observer gives some of his or her energy giving a birth in turn to a new image in the eye of the beholder!
Made almost entirely from recycled parts; from used bike parts, to an old wind up torch, to the base made from a piece of wood I found.

Birth

Made with Marta cavicchioni

Workshop

Bedroom

Spoke clock in basement

I find working with what ever tools and materials (preferably recycled) i have at dispostion allows the hand, the eye, and of course imagination, to work together playfully and creatively. It's like as if depriving oneself (or excepting one's economical reality and not being able to avail) of the luxury of ordering various parts; perhaps even the most shiney, perfectly proportioned components to make an unusual wall clock, the hand, the eye and the imagination are forced to perform together to create somthing, hopefully beautiful or at least expressive. In this basement where i have my workshop i found all the parts i needed to make this piece (a bicycle rim, 2 spanners, spokes, nipples and sprocket). All except the quarz movement which i found in my Dad's shed in Ireland. Some of the much appreciated inheritance left by the passed away, much loved clockmaker/printer of Athlone town.
In this work i see some of my much nutured hope for the future where i think changing our consumeristic way of living doesn't mean going back to stone ages but going forward creatively and adapting to the idea of not throwing away everything we have just to make room for more goods, more and more produced without respect for workers or the planet and everything on it.
Fortunately i know i'm one of many who shares this opinion, so maybe i could save you the moral and philosophical lecture and just invite you to look at this piece just for what it is..an old race bike wheel transfomed into a clock.

Spoke lamp

Bolt Clock

This piece was inspired by my time spent in bike workshops in Rome. An underworld in a car domininated city where one digs through nuts, bolts, spanners, bent bike rims, various gears and various bike components to create something personal. Usually astrange bike. In this case a clock!

I liked the creative and stylised aspect of the bike workshops (in rome "ciclofficine") but

in many of these places the very bike components seem to be part of culture which are used almost as a flag to distinguish cyclists from the others (automobilists). I prefer to find things in common with people that are different than me. Differences between people shouldn't be a problem...they should be an excuse to communicate and understand. I don't have a car but i hope car drivers will see something in my work.

All the parts of this clock were recycled except for the 6mm bolts which form the roman numerals which i bought at the local hardware store. The rim is from a mountain bike and the centre gear is from a childs bike. The spanners which make the hands were cut in half and joined with bike spokes. The movement is quarz.