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| This picture really gives the FIT Twist scale. Nice to know it's not too small. |
By: Rae Ann Fera
I’ve got two turntables and a Honda Fit.
With each new model year carmakers roll out vehicles with slicker
designs, better fuel economy, and higher-tech features, all in an effort
to entice consumers to choose their particular configuration of steel,
gears, and rubber. But for some it takes more than the promise of sweet
speakers and killer fuel injection to connect with a car. They’d prefer
to see it transformed into full-fledged mixing deck.
Honda did just that with its Drivemixer project to launch the Fit
Twist to the Brazilian market. By hacking the vehicle, all of its
features and functions were turned into musical outputs that were then
"played" by N.A.S.A (also of Squeak E. Clean, aka Sam Spiegel, and
Brazilian DJ Zegon, aka Ze Gonzales).
Needing to connect with young, urban consumers, agency F/Nazca
Saatchi & Saatchi focused on current cultural shifts within the
country when creating the Honda Drivemixer.
“Through market research, we came to understand that Brazil’s new
generation of consumers is more independent, both economically and
socially, more educated and thus, more willing to make his/her own
purchase decisions that’ll reflect their own unique personality. For a
patriarchal society, this is nothing short of a small, quiet
revolution,” says account planning director Dorian Dack. “To credibly
position the product as a car that reflects this new generation and what
it stands for, we knew we had to be authentic and credible in both our
message and delivery. We knew we couldn’t just piggyback any sort of
cultural fad and call it ours… we had to go out and risk doing something
genuinely surprising, something bold. We went out on a limb. We came up
with a fresh idea that expresses both what the car and its consumer
stands for.”
Agency creatives Isabelle de Vooght, Isaac Serruya and Roberta Harada
say that once boldness was they key element, they started thinking "how
cool would it be if the car was…?" “That’s when we decided to give it a
twist: We wanted to turn it into a fully functioning operable DJ
mixer."
They started meeting with musicians, tech experts, sound designers,
and producers, and a specific microcontroller board was developed in
order to transform the car’s signals into MIDI notes, meaning most of
its features gained musical functions.
Sam Speigel and Zegon were brought in to compose an original track
that would be performed on the car. “The track was composed with the car
in mind, but we made the music first and figured out how to control it
after,” says Spiegel. “Using Ableton Live we got into the wiring and
computer chips of the car. We used the on/off switches in there to turn
them into MIDI switches. Then rewiring that using Ableton Live with the
sampler playback we were able to turn those into triggers for our
sounds. It was amazing.”
The final musical element was also the biggest: a giant turntable
that triggers a sound when the car drives. “We wanted two… but that was
too crazy,” says Spiegel, I mean… who wouldn’t want a giant turntable
that your car can turn?
With the car wired up and set atop the largest turntable you’ve ever
seen, Spiegel and Zegon had the tricky task of actually performing the
track they’d composed. The colorful sticky notes served that as
indicators make the process look complicated but Spiegel says it wasn’t.
“We had to learn how to play the car [as an instrument] but elements
were split up so well that it was easier to play than it looked.”
Keeping true to the remixing concept, Honda released the track,
“Overdrive,” to the 10 best Brazilian music and entertainment blogs,
inviting them to submit a remix of the track. The remixes were the
compiled into a widget so the audience could vote on their favorite one.
The winner, music blog My Cool, was awarded professional DJ equipment.
Check the winning remix here:
Source;
http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682094/how-honda-turned-a-car-into-a-mixing-deck#1
