Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.

Bright Bike DIY kits cover your bicycle in easy-to-apply design-savvy ultra reflective vinyl for safety. It is like covering your bike with a big stickers that turn ultra-bright in headlights. The retroreflective vinyl is the same material used on the backs of running shoes, but with colors. The kits greatly improve night visibility and thus bicycle safety.These kits are pre-cut and easy to put on.

The Caterpillar has 1 inch bands that wrap around the main tubes, and in inch dashed lines along the fork and seat stays. The Pinstripe has 1/4 inch strips that run along the outside faces of all tubes.

I am speaking on a CUNY Open Access Week panel on Open Access in the Arts, which includes lecture/presentations by Doug Geers, Nina Paley, and myself. There will be a full screening of Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues to follow panel presentation.

My talk is entitled “Giving Things Away is Hard Work,” and covers my experience creating art & design work with Creative Commons licenses. The talk focuses on the specific strategies I have employed for enabling collaboration when working with non-code based work. If you can’t make it, an earlier (less complete) version of this talk is here.

Wednesday, October 20, 6-9pm @ the Brooklyn College Library, Woody Tanger Auditorium (Directions / Campus Map)

In August, after a summer away from NYC, I walked in to my local bike shop, and noticed that they had the same configuration of vinyl on all of the ~20 rebuilt vintage bikes they had for sale. Earlier in the year I had brought the shop a couple of sample Bright Bike DIY Kits. When I saw their modification, I talked to the guy the guy in the shop, and he quickly confirmed their origins from those kits. In many respects, this was the goal of the project: get it out there, so that others could take it and make something better out of it. Awesome.

Their mod has much less reflective material, which means it is less visible at night, but also easier to put on, and less visually conspicuous during the day. I could imagine that visual conspicuousness during the day would be a significant factor for someone buying a bike with the kit already installed. It would have to be “tasteful” enough!

The other interesting effect of this distinctive design is it brands the bike as coming from this specific bike shop. They advertise the bicycles as “recycled” rather than “used.” They rebuild the bearings, and put new chains and tires and brake cables on them. They are clearly are trying to separate these bikes from the general used bike market, and their simple vinyl patterns becomes the brand’s mark.

Recycled bicycles at Brooklyn Bike and Board

Somehow I didn’t blog this image.  This is the range of colors for the Bright Bike DIY Kits (http://brightthread.com). These are 3M Scotchlite 680 retroreflective vinyl kits that are solid colors in daylight and super bright in headlights at night.

Right now, I have a campaign going on Kickstarter.com to scale the project up. If you are coming to this post after March 2nd, when that campaign ends, you can get the kits at http://brightthread.com

Thursday, February 11, 8:00 PM–10:30 PM

Grand EF, Gold Level, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago
Chair: Patrick Lichty, Columbia College Chicago

Inferences to the Atomization of the Artistic System beyond Institutional Spaces
M. Elena Ubeda, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Art in the Age of Dispersion: Snacks, Niche Culture, and the High End of the Long Tail
Patrick Lichty, Columbia College Chicago

Giving Things Away Is Hard Work: Three Creative Commons Case Studies on DIY
Michael Mandiberg, College of Staten Island, City University of New York

Professional Surfers: Contemporary Internet Art and the Montage of Conspicuous Consumption
Marisa Olson, Rhizome

Using Software (Art) to See the World
Warren Sack, University of California, Santa Cruz

I am running a Kickstarter Campaign for the Bright Bike DIY Kits. Even though all the promotion I have done is email this list a little over two months ago, response to the Bright Bike DIY Kits has been larger than anticipated. So much larger than anticipated that I cannot keep up with demand: my assistants and I are making these things by hand. I am actually worried that a big blog might pick it up, as I will not be able to handle the flood. I have to scale the project up, or it is going to eat up all my time (or die.) I am running a Kickstareter.com campaign to raise $2000 to fabricate a jig to cut the kits, buy a whole bunch of vinyl in bulk, and hire an assistant to fabricate the kits.

Please contribute to the campaign to make the Bright Bike kits a stable project. You will get cool stuff in return — Kits! And other special things.

This bicycle was stolen on January 8th 2010 at 195 Bowery NYC, a block south of the New Museum. I attached it to the standard NYC metal scaffolding supports but the thief either unscrewed the bolt, or broke through the metal, and released the scaffolding bracket! It has a white non-reflective “BRIGHT BIKE” sticker on the downtube. The wheels are a brand new set of Open Pros, laced to White Industries ENO hubs (eccentric). Dura Ace brakes, and Sugino cranks. Went in for a gallery opening, came out, and it was gone. This is an ICONIC bike, (there are no other bikes in NYC with the full retroreflective treatment) so if you see anyone riding it, it is stolen.

The Bright Bike was the first version of a project i am working on (http://BrightThread.com). It is a fully retroreflective vinyl wrapped bicycle. When the bicycle is in the beam of a light (like a car’s headlight, or a camera’s flash,) it reflects back super bright. When it is not in the light, it is just jet black.

$500 reward, no questions asked

If you see it, please contact me: michael @@ mandiberg ddott com

Introducing the new version of the Bright Bike DIY Kit. To BUY a DIY Kit right now, go to BrightThread.com

After a year of testing, we are releasing DIY Kits for an updated version of the Bright Bike. The kits come in two types: Caterpillar and Pinstripes.

The Caterpillar has 1 inch bands that wrap around the main tubes, and in inch dashed lines along the fork and seat stays.

The Pinstripe has 1/4 inch strips that run along the outside faces of all tubes.

Each kit is sized to be large enough for a 61cm frame with extra wide tubing, so in nearly every case, you will have extra materials that will give you room to play and experiment.

Video by Bennett Williamson. Tx to Scott Kildall for playing along. (Michael, Bennett, and Scott are the bike wrappers)

This is an old post that got stuck in my drafts box… (oops).

Along with Alan Paukman and Jacob Mellinger of Nikolai Rose, we have been making experiments with trying to make retroreflective fabric. Jacob writes:

I did some simple tests yesterday with the yarn dyer. He wanted to open everything up and get an idea of what we’re dealing with.
We mixed together a very small batch of the 3M ink kit and watered it down heavily to bring it closer to a dye.

In the picture below, here is what’s going on:

Left: Black cotton yarn. First test, some ink (part A), lots of water, very few beads (part B), no coupling agent aka hardcore chemicals (part C). Quickly ironed for partial heat set.

Center: Black cotton yarn. Second test, more ink/water ratio, many more beads, a dash of part C. No heat set.

Right: Grey wool yarn. Third test, same mix as the second test with most of the water poured off the top, leaving a thicker mix of ink/water and a high concentration of glass beads. No heat set.

Pretty cool, I think. Though they were not properly heat set, the pigment took pretty well to the yarns. Even on the third test it didn’t get too stiff or crusty, despite the heavy proportions. Although without heat setting it, the glass beads do rub off some.

This story is too long to tell, but leave it to suffice I got a ticket for some policeman not looking as he walked into the street. My ticket reads “FAIL TO USE DUE CARE.” The irony is that I was on a Transportation Alternatives sponsored ride as part of the Bike New Amsterdam bike slam think tank.

I have contested it, and look forward to my court date 6 months from now on Staten Island. They probably think that scheduling people on Staten Island is a quick way to get them to give in and pay the fine, but it is half a mile from CSI.  My home turf. I look forward to riding my bike over to see the judge and tell him what really happened.