If you’ve ever wanted a cybernetic lynx skull Bluetooth speaker, there’s a Kickstarter for that

Keep these under ‘Kickstarter Products We Can’t Easily Explain’: a fabricated cybernetic lynx skull that doubles as a Bluetooth speaker. The Kranio X, as it is called, is are currently raising money on the crowdfunding platform for what seems like a very limited run of the product – only $ 1,288 was the funding target, and that has already been surpassed with just 19 donors.

So what exactly is happening here? Well, according to Hong Kong-based industrial designer Alan Wong, he created “the speaker enclosure in the shape of a lynx skull because he wanted to contrast a feral, organic feature with the cold, synthetic mechanical parts.” Of course it is not a real animal skull; it is 3D modeled from different components and then painted by hand.

But it is intended to evoke cyberpunk themes, such as the blurring lines between man and machine – or, in this case, animal and machine. Technically, the device should be a lynx with cybernetic implants (assuming it will exist in the future) whose skull has been repurposed as an electronic device (in this case, a speaker). I could quite imagine something as edgy and bizarre as that in, for example Borderlands or maybe Cyberpunk 2077, and that seems to be what Wong is going for.

For what it’s worth, the Kranio X is meant to be a hi-fi plug-in speaker, costing $ 269 under the first of two layers of promise, while the other costs $ 359 in addition to a poster, an engraving, and a copy of the stereolithography file the device will be manufactured from. It comes with a 4-inch, 10-watt on the inside, weighs just over 4.4 pounds, and measures 240 x 160 x 153 cm. It has Bluetooth 5.0 and Wong also displays the signal, sensitivity and distortion statistics for those interested in a more detailed overview on the campaign page. The campaign runs until April 16, 2020.