LaeN'O is the ecodynamique coach building team created by artist Jimmy O'Neal who is producing a high design high performance 140 mpg environmentally responsible 5 passenger fun car as his new work of art and has entered the car entitled "DODO" in the Automotive Xprize competition scheduled to race in 2009. O'Neal is a conceptual painter responsible for works ranging from his "electrocution drawings" using flow through body electricity to burn into paper, to creating machines that paint via EEG connected to the artist that brush on his specially formulated acrylic mirrored paint. To him the "eco DODO" is just another canvas.
LaeN'O was conceived in late 2003 Amidst the art world and museum installations on a midnight Chinatown to Chinatown bus from Boston to New York. Processing an intense dinner conversation with one of the foremost scientist at that time researching mirror neurons as he looked out the window of the bus at rows of parked cars on the street. The parked cars appeared to be passing in reverse which gave them silhouettes of more efficient aerodynamic vehicles. This combined with memories of being raised and programed in classic car auctions helping his dad wipe down slope trunked 40 Fords, exotic concepts, fender skirts, etc. came the moment of realization that on the bus window written in middle-school backwards finger style, in the condensation from his breath he had written the word "laeN'O". "O'Neal" at that point understood a multi-level need to start turning things around and the overwhelming desire to act on the great concern he has for the planet earth and the importance of a value shift in our inefficient symbols by design. Now 5 years later he has turned the hybrid electric system around to gain fuel efficiency in his dodo beak inspired "racEcar" to show that in our present state, seeing ecodynamically designed cars on the road will soon be some of the most beautiful art in america.