Working process
As we decided to work on the Fyrisån we started by looking for the problems of the river. Soon we concluded working with the waste out of the river would be the most interesting.
In the next step we collected our ideas by building models and drawing sketches about waste and the river. In this sketching and building process the idea of creating a waste sculpture was born. We decided to build a sculpture made out of bikes found in the river. The sculpture should look like someone is fishing a huge waste monster out of the river. We built a fishing rod on the bridge and a line goes from the fishing rod and hooks on to the bike sculpture which is in the water below. Everybody should be able to go there and hold the rod. That means everybody can try to help to clean the river in an imaginary way.
One of the early sketches
Modell
Building a sculpture out of bikes was a thing no one of us had done before. So we tried to build a small sculpture out of destroyed bikes as a trial version. We wanted to see how to fix them together. Another reason for this was to estimate how big the sculpture should be and how many bikes we would need. The trial version was a very instable, light construction held together with gaffer tape. We recognized that the real sculpture should be more stable and stronger until it should be between 4 and 6 meter high and placed in the middle of the river.
First trialversion of a bike sculpture
We got permission to use the bikes from Uppsala Kommun. Then we went to their storage area to have a look at the bikes. At first we tried to build the base of our sculpture and see how big it would be. While working we figured out that it would be difficult to get the whole sculpture on to a lorry without it falling apart. So we decided to use a rope going thru the whole sculpture which fixed it. Additionally we used cable straps to hold the bikes together. The bikes were placed in a way that they become wedged together to give the whole sculpture more stability. After we had reached a size of two meters we had a test lift with a lorry crane. Everything went good and so we knew that the construction would hold. We could continue building it higher and higher.
Movie of test lifting the scultpure
Attatching the lines to the crane, very nervous moment
A nest of bikes for this magpie
The cable stripes help to keep the bikes in place
And the rope so everyting will hold together
