Issue 5 of the What a Concept Post. There is always something fantastic or ridiculous on the drawing boards of conceptual designers, artists, and engineers. As always it is only a matter of time before those aimed at cycling end up here to be reviewed with honest unbiased focus on relevance and usefulness. Here are this weeks contestants.
First one off the notepad is a design made by Dutch designers
Merel Slootheer,
Liat Azulay, and
Pieter Frank de Jong. The Prototype is called Feats per Minute Project. The bicycle allows you to play records on the wheels as you ride. It was featured on the
Dezeen Platform at
Dezeen Space for one day in a 30 day exhibit. The design looks like beatnik gramophone.
As an artistic piece I suppose it is interesting, but since it is labeled by it's designers as a prototype, that implies it is meant to eventually be produced. The idea that this could be something seen, and heard around whatever town someone misguided enough to buy one of these would live in, is scary. As if it isn't bad enough that foolish people ride while deafened with iPods and are oblivious to the dangerous environments that all cyclists wide in, now there are idiots that play music through little speakers mounted on their bikes. This takes it even further by making an exhaust pipe horn for friggin' record playing wheels. Now a cyclist can be seen not only as a traffic nuisance but as a severe annoyance. Like we don't have enough obstacles to overcome. It serves no other useful purpose than pissing off neighbors, or decorating the grill of a delivery truck.
But if it is just meant as art, and to be used as a parade, event, or gimmick for shows, kudos. They make unicycles for similar reasons and no one can complain about their existence. Then again it is rare that one is spotted on city bike lanes ridden by bicycle messengers.
Judging it solely on its usefulness as a functional everyday bike, it is a full 6 Hipstars. It will receive one Einstar for its unique potential as a show bike, but honestly that is just being nice since Shriner's dominate the "bikes in parades that are funny" racket . So here is it's final score.
Rating ~ 5 Hipstars!
Trek World 2012 brings us the next concept. Bontrager industrial designer Ryan Hahn brings an interesting stem idea to the Trek road group line. The Concept has a removable computer that nests into a magnesium stem. Ryan dubbed it the "Computermatron Stemigration". Whatever it ends up being named, it is a interesting design idea that I have pondered myself while mounting a computer, phone, and GPS to handlebars. Something that everyday guys like me think, "geesh, it would be cool if they made a bike that had these built in". This is the start of that solution.
Of course it just simply is not enough. Where will my garage door opener integrate with it, or does it come with something like Onstar? Can it scan my muscle groups to determine optimal muscle contraction to develop an efficient cadence? Not yet, but every advancement starts somewhere, just like modern cars began very simple at first. Not a great comparison, but as far as I can tell it is a good first step.
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Coincidental design similarity?
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In time we may look back at this as the beginning of bicycle evolution into the Star Trek era and wonder how we survived without our bike phaser or Tri-corder. The presentation graphic is only lacking Captain Kirk bombing an alien hillside on a futuristic retro mountain bike to impress some hot blue alien princess.
Rating ~ 6 full Einstars!
