Bicycle seismographs
Workshop
A/D/A festival, Hamburg / 2016
I have an old, Dutch bicycle, an omafiets, as they say in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam riding this kind of bike was a pleasure, but as I moved to Berlin, I soon realized that the roads were of unpleasantly uneven nature. Sometimes parts would literally fall off my bike as I clattered over cobblestone and cracked asphalt. The idea for a bicycle seismograph, that is, a mechanical drawing machine, which records the bumpiness of the ride on a small paper roll, was born from these shaky experiences. In summer 2016 came the opportunity to turn this idea into reality in a form of a workshop called Data bicycles at the A/D/A festival, which approached smart cities and citizen utopias with a twist.
We started the workshop at the Fab Lab Fabulous St. Pauli by looking into example seismographs, which I had built beforehand. After this we divided in teams and started a factory line in order to produce all the parts that were needed for six seismographs. The parts were made from hardware store materials and included wooden parts as well as rod and pipes of different lengths, both of which needed to be measured and cut with care. With well organized and enthusiastic teamwork the factory line soon advanced to the point, where we could start assembling the seismographs.
I have an old, Dutch bicycle, an omafiets, as they say in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam riding this kind of bike was a pleasure, but as I moved to Berlin, I soon realized that the roads were of unpleasantly uneven nature. Sometimes parts would literally fall off my bike as I clattered over cobblestone and cracked asphalt. The idea for a bicycle seismograph, that is, a mechanical drawing machine, which records the bumpiness of the ride on a small paper roll, was born from these shaky experiences. In summer 2016 came the opportunity to turn this idea into reality in a form of a workshop called Data bicycles at the A/D/A festival, which approached smart cities and citizen utopias with a twist.
We started the workshop at the Fab Lab Fabulous St. Pauli by looking into example seismographs, which I had built beforehand. After this we divided in teams and started a factory line in order to produce all the parts that were needed for six seismographs. The parts were made from hardware store materials and included wooden parts as well as rod and pipes of different lengths, both of which needed to be measured and cut with care. With well organized and enthusiastic teamwork the factory line soon advanced to the point, where we could start assembling the seismographs.
