Research- Cymatics

This is the first time that I hear the word "Cymatics", it's a study of visualizing sound by vibration.

Nigel Stanford is a Musical Artist who characterized by fusion of trance and ambient music.

He created a music video Cymatics in 2013:

what inspired me is this video present a similar feeling with synesthesia, every time a sound plays, you see a corresponding visual element. As the video shows, he play music with fire, with water and with electricity and so on. He visualized audio frequencies and combined visual and hearing sense successfully through some principles of physics My project is about visualizing music, so the sciences behind this music video bring me some inspiration.

Transforming auditory sense to visual sense by physical vibration is a method that can be used in design field. Ernest Chladni who known as ”the father of acoustics” created the Chladni plate，it shows different pattern by sands on the metal board, depends the different vibration of sound. In 1967, Hans Jennycoined the term cymatics. Cymatics is a tool that can show the hidden world, for example, translate dolphin language by visualizing the sonar beams, which human can not hear but could see it.

Cymatics offers physical methodology to visualizing sounds. If an object can translate auditory sense to visual sense, it will be an unexpected experience that can expand the perceptive mode of ordinary people.

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