We’ve all had brilliant ideas over the few beers, at least they seemed brilliant at the time. But the guys behind Beck’s have actually put an idea that could have only been dreamt up after downing a few into action.
It’s 19th Century technology meets 21st Century music over a bottle of beer in the latest extension to the Beck’s Record Label project. Taking inspiration from Thomas Edison’s phonograph – those weird wax tubes which eventually led to the vinyl record we all know and love today – the beer brand are claiming to have created what they’ve dubbed the world’s first playable beer bottle.
According to Gizmodo, the idea first came up with the idea when they realised that at about the same time Heinrich Beck was brewing his first beer in the 1870s, Tom Edison was tinkering away on designs for the first phonograph.
But making the world’s first playable beer bottle was a formidable technical challenge. The clever people at Auckland firm Gyro Constructivists first had to design and build a record-cutting lathe, driven by a hard drive recording head. Then they reinvented Edison’s original cylinder player, using modern materials and electronics and built to very fine tolerances.
The Beck’s Edison Bottle from Shine Limited on Vimeo.
The Edison Bottle is inscribed with the single “Here She Comes” by New Zealand band Ghost Wave from their album Ages (Arch Hill Recordings) and can be “played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison’s original cylindrical phonograph.”
But don’t expect to find a an album’s worth of music the next time you pick up a slab from your local. Beck’s said there is no plans for the production of the musical bottles. In fact, there’s only one player and two music bottles in the world.
Still, considering how beer has influenced recorded music since then, this physical collaboration somehow seems to make a lot of sense. The Edison Bottle made its public debut at SemiPermanent in Auckland in May to a standing ovation from the assembled media and design community. It’s being used to promote Beck’s new record label.
The invention is just the latest in a string of innovative ideas merging modern technology and music.
For example, Instructables researcher and DIY project maker Amanda Ghassaei recently found a way to turn any mp3 into a 3D printed record, using Joy Divison’s songs ‘Disorder’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ to demonstrate the new technique.
We’ve also seen the worlds first 3D printed guitars, and an art collective recently converted the topography of the entire planet into a playable vinyl record.
