Color Cycle is a large-scale, student-initiated, student run public art project to be executed on the Rice University Campus between April 3, 2010 and June 30, 2010. At noon on April 3, 2010, 100 abandoned bicycles will be repainted by 100 individuals from across the Rice University community—faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates from every residential college and department. These bikes will be distributed across the campus, with at least one bike at every bike parking location. The painted bikes will be arranged so as to create a continuous gradient of color that stretches from east to west.

Color Cycle ties the university together in one abstract gesture both in action as an as artifact. It is intended as a commentary on diversity. Rice prides itself on the social, economic, geographic, and intellectual diversity of its students, faculty, and staff. It contains a wealth of different organizations, departments, and academic programs. Despite this seeming diversity, our day-to-day interactions at the university are limited to a small group of people—friends from our college or major, people of similar socio-economic or ethnic background, or other staff or faculty in our department. Such experiential self-similarity, while easily overcome, often isn’t either because of social laziness, fear of others, or ignorance.

Should one stand at one point on campus and look around, all of the Color Cycle bikes will appear to be the same color. It is only by exploring the campus that the full extent of the project can be realized.

There is also an environmental agenda. The bikes being used are abandoned bicycles collected on the Rice campus. Aside from helping to alleviate Rice’s lack of bike parking and implicitly advocating cycling and related issues, Color Cycle hopes to make a powerful statement on recycling and the possibility of re-considering what we usually think of as “garbage”.

Although this is a temporary installation, we hope that Color Cycle will have a lasting impact on the university. The bikes will be fastened to their assigned bike rack with zip-ties, and members of the community are encouraged to take the bikes for themselves. Many of these bikes are almost ridable condition—all they need is some new tires, and maybe a new chain or seat—and we hope that they will be put to good use. Even if they are not ridable, they can still be taken as a memento of this small piece of Rice history. In this way they will remain as a sort of common ground for members of our community for some time to come.

Every aspect of the project has been and will be documented and archived. This information will be available at www.ricewhatsyourcolor.com. Each deployed bike will be labeled with its project ID and instructions for submitting photos and stories about the bike to the Color Cycle Leadership Team. Submissions will be made available on the website, categorized by bike. As we all know, nothing on the Internet ever really disappears, so even as the bikes vanish from view the project will still be accessible in its totality on the web.

This project was made possible by an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice, part of the Center for Civic Engagement.

http://leadership.rice.edu/