research paper-What does sound wave looks like in ceramic?
What does sound wave looks like in ceramic?
Abstract
Our living in a same world, but world is different for each individual, which related to an issue that we perceive this world through different senses working together in various different way. This paper researched the context about synaesthesia and cymatics in design field, in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding about sensory design. I set a research question about how to visualizing sound especially using ceramic, investigated the theoretical background of synaesthesia and cymatics, selected seven artists who applying this background in their works. The analyzing centered around following four points：The first one is visualizing the sound waves，which discussed the piece Wallwave vibration take the pattern of sound wave by a physical way, The second point is Disrupting tool performance through sound, I introduced tow artists who have utilized the vibration of sound to interact with other material or machine. The third point is collecting sound, I researched an artist who pay attention to subtle sound and the meaning of those sound. The last point is performance of sound, for this point I selected three different artists, related on the combing of craft and new technologies, magnify subtle vibration, and the balance of pleasantness between hearing and seeing. At the last part, I summarized the meaning of this topic and put forward several possibilities about visualizing sound by ceramic.
Key words: design, sound wave, vibration, cymatics, synaesthesia
Introduction
The topic of transforming sound waves to visual representation is the subject of this paper. Most people perceive sound by ear, however, in the experience of synaesthesia，sounds can be seen, they could be specific shapes or colors.
“Some individuals with synesthesia are shocked to discover as
children that the rest of the world does not experience things as they
do. Many other synesthetes reach adulthood completely unaware that their experience is in any way unusual.’ I thought everybody—!’ they exclaim.” (Cytowic and Eagleman, 2011, p,1.)
Then, is it possible to translate auditory sense to objects in order to make ordinary people see the sounds? What will sound looks like? This paper will discuss the issue from three parts. In the first part I introduced theoretical background including synaesthesia and cymatics. In the second part I selected seven relative artists and analyzed the reason for which they choose this topic, the methodology they have taken, the idea they want to express and the comments from other people. In the third part I summarized the developing of this issue in recent years, explained what I have learnt from these artists and rethought the meaning of my project. As for the second part, the artists that have been selected are Loris Cecchini, Oliver van Herpt and Ricky van Broekvhen, Klaus Osterwald, Keith Harrison, Ingrid Murphy, Dagny Rewera, Alessandro Perini, depending the different form of their artwork, this paper divides them to following four groups-- visualizing the sound waves; disrupting tools through sound; collecting sounds and performance of sound.
Background
In this section I will introduce the background of this subject, which is mainly about synaesthesia and cymatics, the former relates to the meaning of this topic, the latter is the methodology, which leads me to focus on sound wave.
The idea of transform sound waves to physical objects is inspired by synaesthesia，a neurological phenomenon such as Holly Williams described :”Numbers, letters and days of the week have their own shade: the number one is white, the letter L is blue and Monday is red. “(Williams,
2014) Some syneasthetes experience colors when they hear, for others, letters and numbers can trigger the sense of taste etc. This special multi-sensory experience is good for artists, some of famous artists have experienced synaesthesia, perhaps best known is Wassily Kandinsky, who painted music by seeing music in colour, line and form, and composer Scriabin have. That is to say, he broke down the barrier between hearing sense and visual sense. “It is worth mentioning at this point that the walls between our senses are not as solid as we generally believe.”(Harrison, 2001, p.2). Synaesthetes’s sensory world is richer than ordinary people because they can accept more information through multi-sensory collaboration, however according to Harrison’s research, synaesthetes appear to be fairly few and far between, the figure is as few as 0.0005% of the population (Harrison, 2001). If there are objects that can trigger two or more senses at the same time, could ordinary people experience the similar world with synaesthetes？This might be a way to expand our perception.
Inspired by cymatics, a study of visualizing sound by vibration, transforming auditory sense to visual sense by physical vibration is a method that can be used in design field. Ernest Chladni（1756-1827）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 Jenny(1904-1972) coined the term cymatics (Hans, 2001). 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.
Synaesthete can experience mixing of sense, which makes they perceive the world in an extraordinary way. 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.
Related artists
1. Visualizing the sound waves
In this section I will explore how the artists have visualized sound waves through a physical vibrations. The artist Loris Cecchini was born in Milan in 1969 and he currently lives and works in Berlin. His work has covered photography, painting, sculpture and installation. He has been trying to explore the gap between the natural and artificial, as he said ” I am very tied to physical reality, to the qualities of the subject and to the functioning of things... The distortion, the structural changes, the biological changes, belong to nature, everything is destined to change in this form of vitality. I try to favour this movement of the objects, and in some works this it is more evident than in others. (Cecchini, 2010)
Wallvave vibration (Loris Cecchini, 2012)
In the series of sculptures Wallwave Vibrations, he liquefied the walls of art galleries through sound waves. Each pattern of pieces is produced by digital way and then seamlessly applied to a flat surface with polyester resin. The physical manifestation of the vibrations expressed the difference of each time with different frequencies and intensities, and the overlapped visual pattern that becomes the phenomenon of echo like water ripples on a fluid layer. In this way, it presented the relationship between the sound and visual sense.
Although there are some critique said "Artists in this show have made ingenious use of materials to skewer what might be called viewers’ "visual comfort zones.""(Turner, 2016). It is undeniable that the Wallwave vibrations shows natural physical patterns in an objective way. Waves influence every aspect of our lives such as light spectrum of light, radio and heat, sonic vibration and quiet water ripples etc. Loris Cecchini made those things often invisible to the naked eye to be visible in the sculptural. This transform method excludes subjective emotions, stands between arts and science. When peoples’ eyes are attracted by the pattern, it also arouses some specific sound in peoples’ unconscious mind. Compare to his other work, in the Wallwave vibrations he paid more attention to the pure pattern to discuss the physical existence and sensory perception.
2. Disrupting tool performance through sound
In this section, I will discuss two artworks that used sound to disrupt tool performance and analyze their different purpose.
Float (Keith Harrison, 2011)
The first project is artist Keith Harrison’s sound installation Float, which aims to explore what happens when ceramics goes into sound field. Harrison focus the possibilities for a wider ranging sensory experience, especially through sound and clay. He learnt industrial Design in BA course and turned to Ceramics and Glass in his MA course, in recent years, he developed some large-scale projects involving sound and ceramics. He explained the reason for why he choose ceramic
“I am interested in the opportunities that clay offers in its different states; as a liquid, plastic and solid and, ultimately, the potential for the direct physical transformation of clay from a raw state utilising industrial and domestic electrical systems in a series of time-based public experiments.”(Harrison, 2011)
In this installation was piled up by twenty-six speakers covered by clay. In this way, sound and clay interactive each other when he play music. the sound were affected by the clay continually, was muffled even muted，while the clay in outside was influenced by sound wave, some of them were distorted and some appeared cracks. He also extended this theme by another project Mute (2015), which consisted of similar speaker with clay, but inviteded audience to chose record then play it. There is a comment from David Trigg “It’s an exciting, unpredictable piece that confounds our preconceptions about what ceramics should and can be. With his various projects and performances Harrison not only breaks all the rules but has thrown away the rule book all together, creating astonishing experimental pieces that sit a million miles away from the image of the proverbial potter at his wheel.”（Trigg, 2011）In Harrison’s installation, sound and clay as two weapons, brings an attack on the senses.
Solid vibrations (Olivier van Herpt and Ricky van Broekvhen, 2015)
The second projtct is Solid vibrations, a series of ceramic vessel which applied the sound waves in ceramic by a speaker and 3D printer, created by industrial designer Olivier van Herpt and sound designer Ricky van Broekvhen. As an industrial designer, Olivier always focus on pushing the limits of existing 3D printing technologies. The idea of this objects coms from the inevitable Moiré patterns on the process of 3D printing, Olivier considered that those patterns could be some specific art form. In 2015, he teamed up with sound designer Ricky to explore how to utilize the Moiré patterns. Their project solid vibrations aims making objects from sound waves. Oliver have taken two years to improve the 3D printer machine to made it print ordinary clay instead of the specific 3D materials. Ricky van Broekvhen put a speaker under the platform of 3D printer and play different vibration frequency during the process of printing. It makes the platform vibrate with the speaker when the print head pile up clay and finally created different detailed patterns depend different sound frequency.
Finally they transform acoustic sounds to a kind of energy, which shaped the clay into intricate fabric-like patterns. However, at this stage, they only use simple sound wave to create the pattern on the ceramic surface, they are planning to use more personalized and a richer sound to create art work such as a speech or a song. In the future, we might translate our favorite song to a series pattern and apply in a 3D printed object.
The difference between Keith and Olivier is they took sound as a different role.
There is an interaction of sound and clay in Keith’s installation, clay is not only influenced by speaker, but also played a role to change sound. This sensory experience has a great potential to interact with audience. However, Oliver’s project didn’t change the original sound wave, but took it as a tool to producing pattern, the effect of sound on clay was unilateral.
3. Collecting sounds
In this section I’ll introduce an artist who focus on collecting subtle, neglected and unfamiliar sounds, and explain why those voices worthy of attention.
Suspect sounds( Klaus Osterwald 2008)
Klaus Osterwald is a freelance visual artist from Germany, his background is painting and graphic design and since 1986 he also has tried a number of different materials to make sculpture such as stell, gals, acrylic and ceramics. Because he have been a jazz musician, he has attracted by sound and has been gathering the sounds since 1998, when he began the project ‘artistic eavesdropping’, he interested to collect different sounds such as gas bubbling up from the bottom and plants producing oxygen that are easily be ignored in our daily life. Since 2005，he has been making sound visible by translating suspicious sound waves into clay sculptures. The piece “suspect sounds” were exhibited on the “Ceramics and sounds exhibition”. At the beginning he just collect sound of various area and combine the sound with visual work to develop sound installations. Now he focuses on the psychoacoustic field of sound, the process of provoking visual equivalents of sound in the mind of listeners. He said” The way of producing images and visual impressions by hearing sounds not only in synesthetic ways but in scanning personal experience is the aim of my research.”(Osterwald, 2015)
Compared to other artist who combined sounds and visual, Klaus Osterwald’s work is more related of personal experience, and more conceptional than aesthetic works. He try to awaken specific memories of audience, and his works brings an experience that makes audiences feel like they are floating in a sea of sounds. It is meaningful that paying attention to those sounds that has been ignored in our daily life or out of our hearing sense, which could expand our perception by trigger an unacquainted synesthetic experience.
4. Performance of sound
In this section I’ll analyze three projects of sound performance from following three aspects: cooperation with new technologies, material selection and the possible difficulty.
The Campanologist’s Tea Cup(Ingrid Murphy 2015)
The first piece comes from Ingrid Murphy, a practicing ceramicist, her piece The Campanologist’s Tea Cup is an interactive kinetic sound sculpture combining ceramics objects and electromechanical devices, it focus on exploring intersections of technology, craft and material process. This piece presents the material characteristics of ceramic through its specific sounds produced by electromechanical system that bounces a ball around the inside surface of ceramic. When audience tapping a small teacup the kinetic activity will be triggered, which brings an interactive and kinetic sound piece that produces a subtle and attractive soundscape from striking ceramic forms. The work combined new technologies, digital approaches and traditional ceramic craft that enable both virtual and physical outcomes Her work attempts to provide the viewer with a different experience of the familiar. This project help people understand how the new technologies influence the ways of people produce and perceive the crafted object.
Moreover, the practices such as kinetic sculpture and experimental music were influenced by developments in engineering system and burgeoning digital technologies, increasing artists explores the context for this type of practice as partly informed by the handmade electronics and technological intervention.
Invisible Acoustics (Dagny Rewera, 2013)
The second project is Dagny Rewera recent invisible acoustics projects, it was inspired by cymatics, attempt to enlarging tiny sound waves by using a unique set-up including a series of speakers, a lens, and some soap bubbles. To make sound can be seen by human eye, Dagny Rewera developed an automated system that dips a hoop into a soap solution and holds it directly above the speaker. The soap bubbles vibrated with sound waves, and a magnifying lens is held above the iridescent bubbles and projected on the ceiling. Each speakers plays variety of different frequency ranges, which can producing different images by bubbles. Then viewer can see the ever-changing image that produced by sound. Rewera described this project " The aim of the project was to change the perception of the everyday… there might be more parallel worlds unnoticed in our mundane lives.” (2014)
Different with traditional experimental materials of cymatics such as liquid, sand or light, Rewera chose soap bubble to be a new transfer media, which created more subtle and colorful images to visualize sound.
Polifonia Liquida (Alessandro Perini, 2015)
The latest artist is Alessandro Perini, who designed a sound and light installation named ”polifonia liquida” exhibited at Inter Arts Center for the Gallery Night Of Malmo (Sweden) in 2015. He translated sound to light image very ingeniously. The work involves a series of 8 independent audiovisual systems, each one composed of a speaker inducing vibration into surfaces and a point light. The sound waves be visualized by the dynamic water, then the light and shadow magnified the image of water ripples.
Unlike above artists, Alessandro Perini has a strictly musical focus “the compositional process takes into account both the sound material and the visuals generated by sound” he explained. Therefore he have to balance the feeling of hearing and seeing. Because nice voices doesn’t necessarily look good.
Conclusion
The above pieces have shown that visualizing sound have becoming an increasingly popular topic because the development of new technologies including 3D printing，engineering system, burgeoning digital technologies and so on. Some artists visualize sound waves directly as the similar patterns or images and other artists use sound frequency as a tool to create new art form. Both of their researches are related to transform different senses and how we perceive this world.
It is important to discuss this topic, which will encourage people to think what the real world is and what have been missed in our daily life since our limitation of sense. Breaking the invisible boundary between different sense will bring an exciting and fresh experience similar with synaesthesia, audience will perceive more information comes from the subtle world. As J. Kevin O'Regan mentioned “Now there are a very large number of objective laws characterizing any individual sensory interaction with the world, and the laws themselves can be expressed in many ways. Because humans have limited cognitive resources, we cannot have cognitive access to all these laws.”（2011）
For my own practice, what does sound looks like in ceramic? It mainly depends two aspects. Firstly, it depends what kind of sound will be used. It could be the distorted melody that we familiar, which changed by interaction with clay, which might produce a new sensory-experience. While it could be an amplification of the voice that have been ignored in our daily life, which reminds people rethink the world around us. It also could be a sound out or human hearing range such as ultrasonic or infrasonic waves, which brings more imaginary space compare to ordinary music and will expand our perception to see the invisible world. Secondly, it depends the methodology that will be taken. There is two different directions to transform auditory sense, a digital way and a physical way. In this paper, we discuss the possibility of physical vibration, because it is a more objective transform especially for the sound we are unfamiliar with. Speaker could be taken as a tool to shape objects instead our hand, through create the vibration of sound waves, it could create patterns in raw materials or change the surface of formed objects. I will get different shape and different pattern depend different sound frequency. However in the other hand, sound wave could be taken as a weapon to produce some damaging effects to stimulate our senses.
In a word, sound in ceramic could be a beautiful pattern, an abstract sculpture, a distorted object or an imagination. In either case，it will brings fresh stimulation of senses which can show the invisible world and expend our perception for the real world around us.
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