If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time wondering why your shoes don’t do more. They just sit there. There’s only three interactive kinds of shoes: the light up ones for kids, the Reebok Pump (are they still around?), and Soaps (you know, the ones with the grind plates on the bottom).
Well, rest assured – the Adidas Megalizer shoes have arrived.
The Megalizer is, to my knowledge, the world’s first musical instrument to also be a shoe. (Or is that a shoe that is also a musical instrument? But I digress.) Using a computer program, the person wearing the shoe can control what sounds come out of the touch sensitive heal and toe ends of the shoe when they walk, jump, tap, or dance. The goal is to use these shoes to create music derived directly from the act of dancing.
According to this Calorie Lab post the shoes are not available for general consumption, and were dreamed up for the benefit of a larger campaign by Adidas called the Mega collection.
That being the case, I’m going to stay away from analyzing these shoes in terms of any possible value as a business asset for Adias. All joking aside, judged solely on their own merit, these shoes are immediately two things – amazing, and strange.
Let’s start with strange.
The very concept of a shoe that makes MORE noise than necessary is a weird one to say the least. Nobody likes a squeaky shoe. Imagine a shoe that could accidentally start autotuning your entrance into a board meeting. That’s like a whoopie cushion for the musically inclined.
That said, strange is not necessarily bad. Strange is also unique. What I adore about these shoes is that, as mentioned in the aforementioned Calorie Lab article, not since the invention of tap shoes has music been created BY artistic movement. Check out this youtube video of dancers utilizing these shoes to their fullest potential:
The dancers could have just as easily sat on the bench and tapped their feet, it would have made the same sounds. In fact, I assume doing it that way would have been even easier. But they didn’t just sit there and tap their feet – Adidas consciously chose to show off a way to incorporate movement and sound into one combined art form. The men in the video were simultaneously dancers and, in a sense, musicians. Adidas has just updated tap dancing.
Technology has forced all of us to re-imagine our answer to the age old question “what is music,” and this promotion by Adidas is a prime example of that. If Adidas’ goal was to create a shoe that has any practical application whatsoever, these shoes were an absolute train wreck. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, in an attempt to generate some buzz, Adidas succeed in once again challenging preconceived notions of what art and music have to look and sound like, and they did it with an Adidas sneaker. Well played, Adidas – you have me buzzing.
Post by Alex Horowitz
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