oBikes of Melbourne
This project was designed in response to a brief to create an archive. The oBikes of Melbourne is a collection of cards that form an archive for the installation and rebellion that came with oBike. As Melbourne’s first dockless bike sharing service, oBike deployed thousands of bikes around Melbourne that were accessible from an app. Within months, hundreds of these bikes were thrown in the Yarra river or vandalised. This created litter in the streets and rivers, with little penalty to oBike as their income is primarily from selling personal data. To try and stop this, Melbourne city council created a Memorandum of Understanding with oBike, declaring the bikes that were ‘dangerously placed’ or damaged must be fixed with a set time frame. This archive aimed to document the bikes that broke the conditions of the Memorandum of Understanding and act to hold oBike accountable. Towards the end of this project, the EPA brought in a $3000 per bike fine to oBike for breached of the Memorandum of Understanding. After this, oBike canceled operations in Melbourne and retracted all bikes.