The Chinese have a tradition of water calligraphy, where people will write poetry with a water brush in public place, only for it to evaporate a few minutes later. Canadian artist Nicholas Hanna thought this tradition needed updating, so he built this computer controlled water calligraphy tricycle.

The trike has a row of nozzles across the rear, that spray water onto the ground in a controlled pattern kind of like an old dot matrix printer. A computer mounted on the handlebars feeds Chinese poetry into a series of solenoids to create the pattern. This allows Nicholas to ride around spraying Chinese poetry as he goes.

This is pretty clever, but it seems like you lose a lot of the elegance and simplicity that are an integral part of the original tradition. At least it doesn't leave a permanent trail like that rainbow painting bike.

Nicholas presented the trike at the Beijing Design Week back in October.

[Video]

Source: Dvice

Water Calligraphy Device Pictures

Also on Blogsteady