a video to accompany my last blog...

CYMATICS ARE BRILLIANT!

The video itself is silent, but i have to say it looks even better when you listen to music while playing it...

enjoy :)

fun experiments with sound and visuals...

This week has been fantastic!

I have been doing a series of experiments into cymatics and trying to recreate my own visuals produced by sounds.  I knew I would need some help so asked my lecturer who directed me to a technician and lecturer in the music department.  With his help I was able to use a slightly modified small guitar amp which I could then sit a metal plate on top with sand and a small petri dish with liquid and inks in it.

modifying the small amp

The experiments we had tried with sand on a metal plate didn't work as well as I had thought.  This was explained by the metal plate being slightly too thick and having a tiny warp which meant the sand tended to shift to one corner very quickly.  It was also compromised by not having a mechanical shaker to sit the plate on while playing the tone, however we did have a frequency tone generator on a phone which was plugged into the amp positioned directly underneath the middle of the plate.

adding some fine grit to the plate

We then tried out an experiment with a petri dish positioned in the middle of the speaker, which worked extremely well.  Some slightly viscose fluid was poured into the dish which was secured with blu tac on the bottom of the speaker.  As with the plate of sand we played frequencies generated by the phone app and the results were spectacular.  I have now decided to take forward the visuals I had created here and use them in the final piece I will produce.

added a drop of white ink then a drop of purple ink to the middle of the petri dish

then started to play a frequency through he speaker

the ball of ink looked like the centre of a daisy and the vibrations looked like petals in the water

it pushed most of the ink out which looked like petals but the shape of vibrations looked square

at its most agitated...a high frequency was used here

cymatics and stop motion/stop motion and cymatics

Last week I had been trying to develop more of the visuals for my project which led to a few small experiments of ways to show sound.

A small experiment with card, flour and a speaker.

This had led to me looking into cymatics and ways to use them in my video piece but the more I found out the more I began to think, actually being able to achieve the patterns in sand or liquid may not be as easy as I had first thought.

So, incase my experiments didn't go to plan I created a few other short stop motion videos as an alternative way of looking at sound and nature.  I was quite pleased with the short videos, bearing in mind they were just short sketches of what my final piece may be like.

stop motion headphones 

stop motion cut paper sound bars

stop motion pebble shapes 

stop motion wire sound spike

Next week I am to start some bigger experiments using various materials into cymatics, with some techie help from the music department.  I'm sure they will work out better than my home made attempt.

So...

Last week I had been finalising my research in my sketchbook, and thinking more about the concept development of my video as well as the visuals.

I was thinking that because the bulk of my research photos were of T-Pot Studio at Path of Condie, it would make sense to work into my piece a musical/sound theme.

Lots of people who replied to my questionnaire of '3 things that remind you of the country' gave me descriptions of some of the sounds they heard while out and about in the countryside.  So I was able to start forming a plan to incorporate sounds and music into my video piece.

This decision spurred a look into cymatics, which is where you vibrate a plate with sand scattered on top at a certain frequency to produce patterns in the sand. The higher the frequency/note the more complex the patterns and the lower frequency/notes produce a more simple pattern.  Some of these patterns, i thought, looked like the cross section of a tree trunk which seemed to link back to the photographs I had taken in and around T-Pot Studio.

I still need to consider creating a soundtrack for my video or if i will use some collected audio from around Path of Condie and the Studio.

a great many musical instruments are made from wood...

The mixing desk at T-pot Studio with a wooden frame