The first pair of standing pegs I had on my bike were made for a motorcycle. They were bolt-on, fold-down foot pegs designed to be used for passengers. I bolted them on the fork legs of my Blue Max. They twisted around quite a bit, but if you were balanced just right, they’d hold you in place. This was before axle pegs were available in every bike shop, before bolt-on pegs and platforms, and well before flatland BMX became one half of competitive Freestyle BMX during the AFA years, less and less a part of it during the X-Games era, and then slid from the face of major competitive coverage, into solitary obscurity, away from the rest of BMX.
When I was riding the Blue Max with the motorcycle pegs, there were only a handful of flatland tricks to learn, and it was easy to see where to start if you wanted to learn even the hardest of them. Curb endos, 180s, rollbacks—the core of the sport's repertoire didn’t even require pegs. This changed quickly as the sport progressed. By the late 1980s, there were hundreds of tricks, many of which involved rolling around in either direction on either wheel, and many of which I still can't do to this day.
Doing tricks on a bicycle is all about translating one kind of motion into another. Whether it’s rolling, spinning, balancing, or just standing somewhere different, every maneuver is about turning an expected movement into the unexpected stunt.
I was introduced to Matt Heckert’s work by issue #7 of Andy Jenkins’ Bend zine. There was a picture of Survival Research Laboratories‘ “Walk-and-Peck” machine (a.k.a “The Centaur”), and it was credited to Heckert. This was the Summer of 1986, just after W&P had a feature role in the SRL performance, “Extremely Cruel Practices: Designed to Instruct Those Interested in Policies That Correct or Punish.”
Now Heckert makes kinetic sound machines. Some are noisy as all hell. Some click, pop and convulse like mechanical, prehistoric creatures. All are fascinating both visually and sonically (See his “Birds” for one example).
“All of my work ends up sounding like a train somehow.” — Matt Heckert
The installation he built for the San Diego State University exhibition I saw involved tilting hoops that cause long poles to rotate in circles. The sound they generate is an ambient metal symphony of sorts. The six machines are connected to a computer where a MAX/MPS MIDI program controls their motion. The programming was done by Heckert’s friend William Tsun-yuk Tsu, and it’s set to randomize their motion so that the machines are all doing their own thing. Also programmed into the controls (at random intervals) is a sequence during which the machines all drop to their lowest speed, and one where they all go freaking-ape-shit-fast. Watching them all fall into sync at low gear after an hour or so of chaos is a calming, serene experience.
The installation was originally titled “Martian Cocktail Party” after an old composition from 1981 that Heckert did prior to forming his Mechanical Sound Orchestra. I suggested “Stirring Machines” due to the stirring motion of the poles and as a play on Alan Turing. With a smirk, Heckert said he’d add my suggestion to the list. He told me later via email, “It seems I have a propensity to pursue sounds from the roterior (i.e., sound from the process of rotating) and build things which allow for rotification of sound, so I would just as soon call these things ‘rotifiers.’” Having spent many hours in the room with this installation, I can say that it was a thing of odd beauty. Having dismantled the machines for their trip back to the Bay Area, I can say that their elegance betrays the complex inner workings of Heckert’s design.
In the artist’s statement for his Machine Sound Orchestra, he writes,
I found that when a mechanical device performs a repeated task by remote control, an observer tends to believe the device is somehow expressing some kind of autonomous emotion—frustration, desire, etc.—thus creating the mystique of an intelligent or sentient machine. This is not a sound issue, of course, but one which deals with the audience/performer relationship and the audience's perception that some sort of non-verbal communication is taking place.
During the reception at SDSU, I overheard Heckert telling another machine-sculpture artist that the trick was translating one kind of motion (e.g., a spinning axle) to another (e.g., a pole rotating in a ring), and I couldn’t help but think of riding my bike. Flatland BMX might not quite be an art form, but it toys with audience expectations in a similar way. The things we enjoy about watching technical extreme sports and kinetic artwork are not only the skills on display but the twists and tumbles we didn’t expect.
I still ride flatland, but the pegs on my bike these days were made for it.
Get a Spine!
I have a few books out, if you’re interested. :)
Bits of the above originally appeared on ESPN.com. Shout out to Brian Tunney. Thanks also to Matt Heckert and Andy Jenkins.
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-royc.
http://roychristopher.com