Playing Musical Roads in Japan

Road tripping in Japan and no iPod? No worries. Japanese designers have created singing streets that play tunes when cars drive on them.

On these “melody roads,” cars act as tuning forks when they hit grooves in the surface. Shizuo Shinoda came up with the concept when he was driving a bulldozer and scraped markings into the road, producing “music.” Think about that horrendous noise cars make when you veer into rumble strips on highway edges. Same idea, but these bumps are farther apart so the “rumbles” sound like pop songs.

Currently there are three such roads in Japan with colored musical notes painted on the road that indicate when a song is coming up. Part art project (reminds us of the NYC subway station that plays notes as you walk by), the system appears to have a hidden function: inducing very slow driving. Speeds faster than 28 mph push the song into fast forward, resulting in the theme from Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Possibly not music to everyone’s ears.

Via The Guardian