Buk Buk Raceway

with ololo (2015)

Buk Buk Raceway is a tongue-in-cheek carnival amusement, allowing audience to race remote controlled chickens around a farm themed racetrack.

In a fun and competitive environment, audience members race each other using bespoke chicken foot controllers; inspired by arcade machines of our youth, and designed to be slightly difficult. Participants are left wondering how much control they enjoy in their lifestyles.

Buk Buk Raceway was commissioned by Beaufort Street Festival in 2015.

Concept: Steve Buckles
Performance: Steve Buckles, Steve Berrick & Ryonen Butcher
Sculpture: Steve Buckles
Electronics: Steve Berrick

For Buk Buk Raceway, Steve Buckles and I hacked apart remote controlled cars to create our own sculptures and control mechanisms. Steve sculpted fibreglass chickens and mounted them on the off road wheels.

Steve also modelled and CNC cut custom arcade style cabinets, each with a jarrah cut chicken foot starring column and accelerator pedal. I used Arduinos and analog and digital potentiometers to interface those systems to the existing RC controllers.