As a music producer I have been intrigued by the study of Cymatics for sometime now. Having become more engrossed in creating digital 3d fractal art over the past year or so, I have recognised a similarity between Cymatic patterns and the 3d Mandelbulb structures created using software such as Mandelbulb3D. I apologise in advance but any references to Fractal formations will be based on my use of this program.
I did run a search to see if I could find any current threads discussing this field, but it turned up nothing, so I thought I should kick start one. I apologise if this is already being discussed elsewhere on the forums, but I couldn't find it.
Here is a brief video describing the basics of Cymatics - rather impressive I think you'll agree, I especially like the Pink Flloyd visualisation and would love to 'see' the whole track!
http://www.youtube.com/v/CsjV1gjBMbQ&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1The Chladni plate vibrations remind me of cross-sections through the Amazing Box formula and the images produce by the 'Cymascope' show resemblance to the '8th power triplex math sine bulb' produced by the Integer Power formulae (I think that is the correct description - I'm new to thinking about these forms in this way, usually I load the formulae and simply hunt for aesthetically pleasing forms, so please excuse my lack knowledge of technical terms).
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this thread but i'm just going to run with it and hope i don't make a complete tit out of myself in the process!!
I first noticed Cymatic action while I was at work on a bar in a nightclub. The bass was so loud and intense that I noticed the beer in the drip trays forming patterns. Here's a (rather poor quality and loud) video i took of this happening.
http://www.youtube.com/v/gxqB4Ix4J9g&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1It's not so clear from the video but that pattern was forming a perfect 'raised' grid pattern on the meniscus of the beer. One of the customers actually thought he had been spiked with something when he spotted it.
Here is a very nice site about cymatics
http://www.cymatics.org and I advise you to have a play with a Chladni plate, it's pretty good fun)
I have attempted to experiment with forming these patterns by mounting a deep plastic saucer ( about 3 inch deep and 8 inch diameter) onto the cone of a speaker driver. I then used the program Max/Msp to generate a pure tone to play throught the speaker once the saucer was full of water. Unfortunately I have no footage of this but I can guarantee you it was pretty awesome (in the true sense of the word). Some amazing images where generated when I ran this setup and mounted a laser pen to reflect off the surface of the water. I will have to re-make the rig and record this to post here.
Anyway I am detracting from my original point which was the likeness I see between these naturally occurring 'Cymandelic Bulbs' (I know i'm just making terminology now, but hey why not!) and the digitally produced Mandelbulbs. Thats enough of my babbling, I'm interested to hear what you guys think. Here's a couple of images as food for thought (images produced by cymatics.org using the 'Cymascope' you should go check out more of their gallery!!)
Chladni plate patterns ( found at
http://solawakening.com/cymatics/ )
14Hz Square Wave and water
16Hz Sine Wave and water