Offering what could be seen more like a piece of art rather than a bike frame, Specialized has pulled back the curtains on four very limited colourways of the beloved Chisel cross country frame. We’re unsure whether or not they should be built up, or hung on a wall.
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With the new limited run, Specialized has made a comment on the fine balance between the physical and digital worlds, as the former decays and the latter expands. The new artist series encourages to question the relationship of the two worlds.
The brand aims to do this by using Earth, Wind, Fire and Water as themes to push against the digital world and has created four very nice looking framesets.
The Water frameset sees flowing colours that are inspired by the shifting colours of the Icelandic lakes. Specialized says that this kind of flow also happens in the digital world and that’s represented through binary. As such, the Specialized logo is made up of 1’s and 0’s which are arranged to translate “Nature Digital Nature Digital” over and over.
Following Water, there’s Fire. The wall that Fire can create has been compared with digital firewalls.
This frame features reflective foil pieces under a red tint on the frame which represents data passing through the firewall. The Chisel graphic on the seat tube melts to further represent fire.
The Earth frame gets cool, subdued colours which have been inspired by the ceramic-esque tones of the desert interrupted with a glitch effect, which creates a gap in information.
On the frame, we can find the glitch on the seat stay along with a collage of photography on the seat tube.
Finally, there’s air. It gets a luminous wash that represents fog rolling over the hills off the Pacific colliding with Silicon Valley.
The symbol of fog is compared to how the digital world can envelop you with its technicolour infinity and that’s represented in the colourful and glitch-filled logos.
One of these limited edition frames will set you back £1,100. The Earth and Air versions are available now while the Fire and Water frames will be available from 8th June.
