THE WORK OF CHARLIE WHITNEY

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

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.

Made with Red Paper Heart

Two women riding bikes on a stage with projection backgrounds.A crowd in front of the biking game screens.A man raising his arms in victory.Closeup of a sensor mounted to a stationary bike.A man testing a bike indoors.

CYCLING CLASSIC

Bike Racing on the Big Stage

Credits:

Code

Charlie Whitney

Creative Direction

Zander Brimijoin

Design

Zander Brimijoin

Ayaka Ito

Event Production

UrbanDaddy