More about the project via their website:
What if you would be able to generate music by the simple act of riding your bike? This project started with that question. We have build the first prototype and thanks to Jeffry Sol and Vincent Beijersbergen we were able to do so in a month. And yes it was pretty difficult, but loads of fun…. the idea is pretty simple; basically, a wheel and dynamo work the same way as a record player. But it was not as easy as it looks. First, we had to come up with a solution for the wheels; how can we change the records? The fork was blocking the wheel. That’s why we changed a 30 year old bike into a lefty bike; and build a construction that would still support the weight and would be strong enough for people to ride on it. The biggest challenge of all was to make sure that the needles would stick to the record and follow the grooves, without skipping too much. Therefor we bought two vertical record players and took them apart, to see how they worked. Also; we wanted our bike to be as low tech as possible; that’s why the only “extra” energy we used was a 9 volt battery to support the amplifier. In order for the records to run smoothly, we also had to change the crank of the bike and the chain. After that, we build our own horn, to have some extra volume, and we sprayed the whole bike black. We had some sponsors like bike stores, handy people and DJ’s and that’s how our dream in progress turned out to be real… Here’s to the crazy ones; thank you guys, you rock. - Merel, Pieter and Liatvideo via Adverblog / image source of record player
THANKS, Michiyo!
A fellow student of mine at the Maine College of Art, Rusty Lamer did something like this in 1998.
ReplyDeleteFor an Interdisciplinary Art class, we were paired up and each had to do a mixed-media biographical art piece about the other. He was doing a lot of work at a local radio station at the time so, he interviewed me and created an audio interview mixed with my favorite music.
Since I was (and still am) a hard-core mountain biker, he then transferred the mix onto reel-to-reel, put a take-up reel on my rear hub, then put my bike in my stationary trainer and wound the leader on.
The final display was in the school's front window. With the instructor and entire class watching and in full riding togs, I played my own biography by pedaling .
I always thought Rusty was a genius.
Arkonbey
ReplyDeleteWhat a totally cool project. Rusty Lamer's website is full of interesting projects... I spotted his 'Sound Machine' which doesn't have a explanation but also seems to be hub activated. So many projects back in the pre-hyper digital/internet days have gotten lost or are difficult to unearth - thanks for sharing!
v!