September 3, 2009

Visible sound with Cymatics

Below is a recent TED Talk from Evan Grant, Making sound visible through cymatics. It's nice to see an old idea get some high profile exposure; Hans Jenny's '70s 2-volume book Cymatics had been hard to find, but was reprinted awhile back, and the film narrated by Jenny is now on DVD (pieces are on YouTube). Cymatic figures are more often called Chladni patterns, especially in acoustic and physics texts, and are used to study nodes and vibration in instruments like violins and tablas. Someday sound will be important in providing cues in visualizations.

See also AEP posts Music of the spherical particles and Visual music and motion graphics.

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