A Cruiser and a Queen Song:
Driving interaction by bike.

Description
Our project set the lyrics and images of the Queen song, Bicycle Race, to the rhythm of cruiser riding. As particpants rode in circles in front of projections, the act of changing direction released text of the lyrics from the song onto the screen. At the conclusion of the experience, the entire song was revealed.

Technology
A 360-degree single turn knob was the inout device that sensed the data. The knob was attached face down to the headset 
(handlebars) of a 1962 Schwinn Typhoon Cruiser. The knob holder bracket was attached to the frame of the bike to secure it in place during steering. As the user swung the handle bars from left to right with the motion and path of the bike, the knob was turned. The range of motion was approximately from 9-3 o’clock.

The knob was connected via wire to the Making Things' Make Controller as an analog input sensor. In order to turn the device into a wireless micro-controller, a standard ethernet cable connected a small Belkin Wireless-G router to the Make Controller. This allowed the bike to be ridden without the constraints of a cable and to communicate to NET Connect software wirelessly up to 400 feet away. The make controller drove an Adobe Flash application on a dual screen projector setup.

Steering the bicycle while riding triggered a tracing projection of the path of the bike. Each strong turn (past 20 degrees in either direction) released an explosion of two line
segments of lyrics onto the screen, thus re-creating the song in a different order. Also, in each session, an image the women from the Queen album cover “flashed” the audience and the rider for five seconds.

Analysis
The goal of this interaction between human, bike and computer was to create a visual record of the song and of your experience, as well as to enhance the joy of riding a cruiser.

Our project was a challenge to execute technically. The wireless router did not give a consistent signal because of inconsistencies in the perfomance of the batteries.

What was most successful about our project were the projections with shadows of the bike in front, combined with the tracing action on the screen, orchestrated by the user. The least successful parts were that aside from riding the bike it was a little boring.

Doubling the scale of the text and images would have made the entire piece more compelling. Several small changes would have clarified our objectives to the particpant: clarifying the beginning, middle and end of the experience with titles and a beginning and ending screen, playing the song louder, and developing the typography further to match the content of the
text.

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Download a Quicktime version here.