CYMATICS

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I was inspired for my project from the music video of Nigel Stanford. Nigel Stanford in his video has a band performing and all the instruments of every musician are connected to a different cymatic device by recreating cymatic pattens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs. My project though differs from that one substantially. The project of Nigel Stanford was a recreation of cymatic visuals that were recorded separately from the music and were synced with the performance of the band. It has though a lot of similarities in the way that many of the shots of the cameras are close and focused on the different surfaces. Even though my inspiration was from this video, I decided to create a gallery of photos of cymatics in order the public to meet and learn about the cymatics.

 

 

 

 

Another project that is related to my work it is the website CymaScope http://www.cymascope.com/aboutus.html , which is a project of John Stuart Right. John Stuart Right studied for forty years physics of the sounds and he did a lot of researches in the field of cymatics. John Stuart Right created the CymaScope website that is a project, that its aim is to inform people about the science of cymatics, but also they researched and presented their knowledge about the medical affect that cymatics have on human life as well as the relation of cymatics with other scientific fields. I felt my project related to the work of John Stuart Right as the aim of my project is a website that can inform people on what cymatics is and from where the cymatic phenomenon started. I also aimed to present them some nice forms and patterns of them.

 

 

 

 

The project http://cymatics.org/ affected largely the course of my work. This project is a website that is being made in order to inform the public about the science of cymatics. In their project they give information about the history of cymatics, they include information in order someone to build his/her own device of cymatics and also they include a gallery of photos of their cymatic experiments. Moreover, they share their experience through their experiments and also promote other people’s work in the field of cymatics. This project is more about sharing knowledge on this field by suggesting books or websites or other people work, related to cymatics.

 

 

 

The final project concluded to differ a lot from the project I had proposed. In my proposal, I had proposed a live cymatic installation that it was including two different cymatic devices, one as the device I described earlier and one that was recreating cymatics with sand. Above every device I had placed two cameras that were capturing live the change of the patterns in its device and with the use of a projector and a video mixer device, it was being projected on the wall by changing from the one to the other every ten seconds.

 

 

 

I decided to change my final project from the live installation to the creation of a photo gallery, because with the live installation I was not able to recreate a high definition quality projection of the cymatic patterns, something that I thought that was the most important part in the project. So I decided to create a gallery with high quality photos of cymatic patterns in order to be able to share the experience with the public and give them a good example of the cymatic phenomenon.

 

 

 

 

 

By starting to develop my idea to create cymatic patterns my knowledge was really limited as I had not tried something like that before. The first step on this project was to create a device that would recreate those cymatic patterns. At the start I created different kinds of cymatic devices, one that was creating cymatic patterns by the vibration of thin metal surface with sand and the other one was creating the cymatic patterns through the vibration of a liquid. As I mentioned earlier, the project had a different aim in the begining from the conclusion. I changed the project from a live installation to a website that presents mainly a photo gallery and shares information on the field of cymatics. I abandoned the first plan, when I understood that the main aim in order to present the cymatic patterns to the public was a clear and high quality of videos or pictures, because according to the first project the restriction on high quality was in the live projection something that I could not achieve as I could not avoid the use of web cameras for the live projection.

 

 

 

 

By changing the project and focusing on the capture of high definition photos of cymatic I had already learned a lot in order to recreate some really aesthetic photos. As I was experimenting, I realised that a large part on the success of the experiment played the light and the position of it. The light should be exactly on top of the surface of the liquid and the distance of it has to be when it starts mirroring at the perimeter of the liquid’s circle. Then the camera was placed exactly in the middle of the circle light with the lens to be exactly where the light was finishing. At this project, I managed to recreate successfully some interesting cymatic patterns and also a variety of them by using three different kinds of liquid water, glycerine with water and cornflour with water as I mentioned at the start. Although there are more ways to have a larger variety of patterns not only by using different kinds of liquids with different density but also by using different size speakers, with smaller or bigger diameter.

 

 

 

In conclusion, the project is at a satisfying point with further opportunities of development by experimenting on different devices of cymatics and having the opportunity to share more knowledge, experience and enriching more the gallery with aesthetic photos with the public.

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Cymascope. (2017). Home of the Cymatics. [online] Available at: http://www.cymascope.com/index.html [Accessed 11 Aug. 2017].

 

Cymatics.org. (2017). Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: http://cymatics.org/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2017].

 

Jenny, H. (2007). Cymatics. Epping, N.H.: MACROmedia.

 

Leeds, J. (n.d.). The power of sound.

 

YouTube. (2017). CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music - Nigel Stanford. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs [Accessed 11 Aug. 2017].