Tiger Beer creates Air Ink – first ink made from air pollution via Marcel Sydney + Graviky Labs
Tiger Beer, in collaboration with MIT-spinoff Graviky Labs and agency Marcel Sydney, has launched Air-Ink; an innovative range of pens, markers and spray cans made from air pollution.
To create Air-Ink, unique devices were developed to capture soot from vehicles’ exhausts. These were fitted to trucks, ferries, chimneys and even cranes around Hong Kong and India. The captured pollutants were then purified and turned into safe, reliable ink for everyday use.
Overall, 150 litres of Air-Ink has been produced, approximating to 2500 hours worth of diesel car emissions.
A range of Air-Ink products were given to emerging Asian street artists such as Bao Ho, Caratoes, Xeme and Christopher H, who used them to create spectacular murals and advertising on the streets of Hong Kong.
Says Mie-Leng Wong, director of international brands, Tiger Beer, Heineken Asia Pacific: “The streets are not only a great place to drink Tiger, they’re also the place where creativity, ideas and passion are born. By using our entrepreneurial spirit to repurpose pollution into ink – the lifeblood of creativity – we’re giving creative people the tools to enhance their streets, and empowering inventors like Anirudh to take small but impactful actions against air pollution.
Says Sharma, founder, Gravity and former T35 MIT Innovator of the Year: It’s the perfect partnership between technology, art and the streets. It could only be achieved through the collaborative efforts of my team, the artists and a brave brand like Tiger Beer. I’m very proud of what we’ve created.”
Says David Nobay, founder, Marcel Sydney: “The excitement about where Air-Ink can go – quite literally – tells me that we’re onto something potentially very big here.”
Says Scott Huebscher, ECD, Marcel Sydney: “It was important that the ink itself had to be a high-quality product that artists could use for real street art. Even the animations in our film were made with Air-Ink.”
The initiative is part of Tiger Beer’s mission to inspire people to ‘uncage the Tiger inside’ to take action for what they are passionate about. Tiger plans to launch more Air-Ink initiatives in other markets across Asia in 2017.
Currently, Air-Ink is not commercially available but Tiger is working with Gravity Labs to manufacture more for future products.
Agency: Marcel Sydney
Production Company: Goodoil Films
Director: Joel Kefali
Executive Producer: Juliet Bishop
Technology Partner: Graviky Labs
Technology Director: Anirudh Sharma
Location Credits: Jacob’s Garage, Indusspray, Pavithra, 80 Edifice (Bengaluru, India)
Producer: Andrew McLean
DOP: Lachlan Milne
Editor: Simon Njoo
Post Production: Palace
Client: Tiger Beer
Music Producer: Juan Woodbury & Christine Bilich
Music Company: Squeak E Clean Productions
Creative Director (Music): Justin Hori
Sound Design: Rumble
Song Writers: Justin Hori & Alberto Mejia
Song: “Inked”
12 Comments
But I’m sure it’ll be really popular with street artists in Singapore… http://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-graffiti-sentence-idUSKBN0M10DK20150305
And this is related to Tiger Beer because….?
Aiiiir ball! Aiir ball!
If there is financial benefit to soot donator, then it might just work. If not….nehh…
This is awesome! Nice work Marcel
I really do like this. Smart.
I do however struggle to understand the relevance to tiger beer. Can’t wait to see hope they spin it for the casestudy.
interesting idea and a well made film.
“whats its relevance to Tiger?” There is none. But that doesn’t matter. It’s association. Align your product with something that looks cool and you look cool too. (if you do it well, which they have)
Just feels very familiar.
http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/art-2/artists-turning-acts-pollution-works-art/
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2014/09/26/reverse-graffiti-highlights-traffic-pollution-in-cities/
And then you find out the company developed it on their own and Tiger attached their name to it.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/27/arts/air-ink-painting-with-pollution/
If there was a clever link to the product, maybe…
Was eondering what the relevance was to Tiger Beer but this was answered when they unveiled the Tiger Beer billboard made of AirInk.
Maybe they could follow-up with the labels on bottles made of Air-ink.
They’ve literally packaged someone else’s product.
http://anirudh.me/portfolio/kaala-printer-contraption-that-runs-on-soot-from-pollution/
Not Marcel’s idea. Nice packaging though.
This is a good idea, it doesn’t stop pollution but it creates something useful from it.
Tiger beer are sponsors of the research. In case you do not understand, research and equipment is not cheap, Tiger pay money for research to be done and in turn have advertising and a potential profitable product.