The Cycling Classic - head to head bicycle races with generative visuals

The Cycling Classic

UrbanDaddy asked us to create an installation for the E2NY Music and Arts festival 2011. We proposed a head to head bike race inspired by Goldsprints, but with more of a design focus. We mapped forests, foxbears and orbs to the speed of the bikes, giving the riders a sense of their speed. Riders face off against friends, enemies and strangers to see who can ride the farthest in 60 seconds.

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The faster the cyclist, the more environments and creatures they unlock. A lucky few even made it into space.

The Cycling Classic - style frames, building your spirit animal
The Cycling Classic - style frames, on the track
The Cycling Classic - style frames, in space!

Each bike was rigged on a modifier roller which fed data into a central server by way of an Arduino using a system based off of the opensource openSprints hardware package. This server then shot synched data out to 3 separate openframeworks applications which drove the visuals. The graphics themselves were all dynamically driven and used a combination of pre-rendered and live effects to spur on the racers.

The Cycling Classic - head to head bicycle races with generative visuals
The Cycling Classic - head to head bicycle races with generative visuals
The Cycling Classic - head to head bicycle races with generative visuals
The Cycling Classic - head to head bicycle races with generative visuals
The Cycling Classic - the winner

Team

  • Zander Brimijoin - Creative Director
  • Ayaka Ito - Designer
  • Charlie Whitney - Lead Developer

Created for UrbanDaddy