Piloting a mission for planet Earth

Matt Hope joins the Beijing brigade of cyclists on the road each day, but his bicycle is special. It looks like a prop out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, and it attracts much attention and not a little alarm every time he rides out on it.

The 37-year-old Beijing-based artist is a natural inventor, and has been creating contraptions since he was a student.

His homemade-in-China bicycle has a respirator attached, and when he puts it on and starts cycling, electric sparks fly from the back wheel. A passer-by excitedly shouts “fadian!” – “he’s making electricity”.

“People are always talking about the bad weather. I think it makes sense to create a bike that cleanses the air for the person riding it,” says Hope, who is originally from London, and now has a 200-square-metre studio in Caochangdi Art District.

Hope graduated from the Winchester School of Art in London and then attended the University of California, San Diego. He became an artist in 2004, and is very much into experimental art.

“The idea is to make people think about individual strategies to tackle problems. When something breaks, I try to fix it. The bike is me trying to ‘fix the air’. Rich people can have expensive air filters, but I cannot afford them, so what should I do?” he says.

Hope’s respirator on two wheels uses the same principle as power stations in cleaning up the air. As the cyclist pedals, a mini-generator attached to the back wheel creates electricity for the high-voltage transformer in front that generates a static charge.

An electrified mesh container attached to the pannier rack attracts dust particles, which stick to a metal trumpet. The air, now cleansed, is propelled along a tube to the mask that the cyclist wears.

Hope bought the bike from the supermarket for 200 yuan (Bt950), the cheapest he could find. Other parts were from the “pile of junk” he has collected in his studio. He is a great collector of broken things, and he takes them apart and utilises the parts for other projects.

“It’s both interesting and satisfying to reuse broken things, because I can give them new lives or make them different,” he says.

It took him only five days to finish the bike in October last year, but it did not generate much interest until January when a friend shot a video and uploaded it online.

“What a cool bike! He really looks like a pilot,” says an online comment on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, while other Netizens also spoke highly of his innovation and jokingly said they wanted a similar bike.

In January, air pollution in Beijing reached record high levels when smog shrouded the city for 25 days and PM 2.5, particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter became a major concern. Hope’s bike became part of the buzz.

Right now, Hope uses a regular bike instead of his innovative two-wheeler, for fear that he may damage it. He is also in discussion with organisers interested in exhibiting it abroad.

It has been quite an adventure for Hope, who came to Beijing in 2007 after being commissioned to do some large-scale sculptures. He soon realised that it was much cheaper to practice his art in China than in other countries. So he never left.

“I was doing similar stuff in London but coming here allows me to do more experimental things because it is cheaper and I can create more works. I have more fun here,” he says.

He had wanted to live in China long before the opportunity arose, because he was drawn to the energy and activity of the country.

“In China, it seems you go through lots of things very quickly. It seems to be the ideal place to recycle something like this because you can build up stuff very quickly, too,” he says. 

Hope has produced a slew of interesting industrial designs and experimental prototypes. When he first came to Beijing, he made a machine that can collect water from the air because the weather is so dry.

“His work is beyond art. Ever since we were in art college together, he has deconstructed common perceptions in the real world to build new inventions like the bike,” says his  friend Jon Phillips, designer of Hope’s website.

Hope’s ideas typically go through months of development before a final product arrives. “The most difficult thing is to try to find the answer and keep on track. It takes on different stages before you get it right, and sometimes you don’t know where to go,” he says. But one thing keeps his dreams alive.“Beijing is still inspirational for me. The feeling I get here is great for an artist because I see different things and get more ideas.”