Hobby Horse

(Robotic sculpture)

Resin,  lights, motors, kodalith photographs, TV Guide

Performed for 45 minutes, Fairbanks Gallery, New York

Also Super 8 film "Hobby Horse" (9 mins)

Exhibited at The New Contemporaries 1982

ICA London (Catalogue)

The original inspiration for this was the TV seats they had at the Greyhound Bus Stations in 1980. They were fed with  25 cent coins for 15 minutes of TV.

The figure,  the TV "Head" and the Hobby Horse were cast in clear fibre glass, embedded with kodalith transparencies of photos of my life with TV. It was also embedded with the "TV Guide" and such that the paper became translucent and the black print showed double sided.

The 3 feet of the robot had wheels so that as it gyrated it was able to move around the floor.

The Hobby Horse was motorised using cam timing mechanism on a 3 minute cycle. First it would gyrate on the "horse". After 2 minutes it would pause and the light in the TV head would go off. Then the left hand would put a quarter into a coin slot. The the right arm, which held a box like a cereal packet, would rise up and pour cereal in to the top of the TV (this went in to a tube which ran the cereal back into the box*). The TV would light up, and the cycle would start again.

*In practice the cereal got stuck, so I used marbles instead.