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Air Sculpture
Have you ever seen the symetrical patterns on a piece of metal that is covered lightly with sand and bowed with a violin bow? Imagine if you could see the 3D patterns that sound makes in air. (does anyone know a way to do this?) Now imagine that artists competed to make the most startling short term (1-15 seconds) 3D air sculptures | |
I was just reading that Frank Zappa called his guitar solos
"air
sculptures". I was thinking that it would be truer to say
about
a piece of music like a FZ guitar solo that it was an "air
movie"
since the PROGRESSION of configurations of arrangements of
pressure in the mass of air would
be what was more
characteristic than say any actual configuration. So
appreciating it would require the appreciater much more to
act over a period of time rather than just to apperciate all
at
once.
Pop song structure has been at 3 minutes and 30 seconds for
a
good hundred years now, not only because of the orriginal
sizes of those wax cylanders but also hopefully because of
something more hardwired. But everything changes and
especially with information overload people are getting used
to appreciating more in a short period of time. I was
thinking
of those 10 or 15 second short musical interludes on public
broadcasting radio and how they are long enough to interest
you but not long enough to lose you and I was thinking that
it
would be really cool to make the most complex and
interesting sound you could make in short enough of a time
to
exploit people's natural sense of curiosity but not long
enough
to employ their ability to classify and ignore. I guess sounds
or
"songs" like this could be sculpted really calculatingly with
computer graphical music interfaces, or they could be
performed by large ensembles -- the point being to make a
sound that transversed the complete dynamic tonal
harmonic
etc range in as short a time as possible while not being too
complex to understand. I would imagine sound like this
would
be impossible to ignore, and that an "arms race" of sound
development like this would spawn impossible to ignore
sound
bytes that would help big evil corporations sell calculatedly
diluted inanities and far seeing artists tell new stories alike.
And I was also thinking that that type of sound would be
better described by the term "air sculpture" as in a single-
stroke like experience that balances the time and space
aspect of sound more than a guitar solo or a symphony which
relys more heavily on the time aspect. Does anyone have
any
links to short sculptural sound bytes like this?
Seeing with Sound
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voice.htm Use the java demo on this page to create amazing looped sound sculptures [JesusHChrist, Sep 16 2005]
Cloud Sculptures
Firework_20Clouds My approach to short-lived air sculptures. [DrCurry, Sep 16 2005]
(?) Amazing lo-tech visualizations
http://video.google...7253148167375317006 watch this Google Video of sand on a speaker [JesusHChrist, Oct 06 2006]
[link]
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Cool. While cutting tile on the wet saw this morning the light coming in the window was just right to show the various patterns that the vibration was making in the layer of water on the saw table. By playing with the amount of force I applied to the cut, I could make what looked like individual flames that rippled up the length of the table. I knew there was a halfbaked idea in there somewhere and I think you nailed it. |
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I've seen the patterns that 2f mentions on a tile being cut, in the tub of the wet saw, in dishes of water sitting in a sink with the garbage disposal running, in the tank of my Water-Pik while it was running. It's a very visually interesting effect. |
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I wonder if anyone has ever done an art/science piece that employed speakers or other devices to vibrate a container of water. Different frequencies coming from different directions in different amplitudes and wave shapes might make some fun-to-watch patterns. |
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I remember seeing a demonstration of an acoustically based process that sort of stratified, concentrated and suspended heavy particulate pollution in mid-air. So, I'd say there's a chance that some form of the proposed idea might work if you allow for some sort of heavy smoke or somesuch to be wafted in to the air at the start. |
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An acquaintance of my brother-in-law had developed a speaker system which did some magical constructive and destructive interference to create a virtual speaker in the air between two emitters. I can't remember what the guy's web site is now. |
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I've heard it is possible to create beautiful patterns on a wall by reflecting a bright laser beam off the cone of a large speaker. |
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At the opening ceremony of the Olympics last year, there was an effect of a 3D DNA double helix in smoke - I only caught a glimpse of it. Looked like a blue laser. Does anyone know how it was achieved? |
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[JHC] - Big bun for you, mate. |
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[Adze] - Trying that out tonight |
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[Pa've] - I thought of chalk dust, but both chalk dust and smoke give you breathing difficulties. Cracked oil might be better, but it's usually only ever used around loud music and has never yet showed any indication of the sound passing through it. It is possible though that if you strobe light it at audio frequencies you may be able to 'freeze' the wave movement that would otherwise not be visible. |
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Perhaps this would look like the performance being given in the magnificent concert hall as a background to one of the scenes from Star Wars III. |
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Could you maybe image the sculpture with strobed Schlieren photography? Maybe Schlieren holography (if such a thing is possible)? |
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But [Ian] these could just as well be vacuum sculptures. |
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That very cool [Ian], will you show them to me one day? |
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[wags] they've been on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Sq for some years now - only replaced yesterday |
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Chladni patterns. </smartass> |
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Nice [IT]. It's probably been done, but maybe you could create a sculpture by defining the space where it exists - by writing reviews, articles about it, etc. Without, of course, actually building it. In fact, you could probably get away without even giving a physical description. The Emperor's New Sculpture, sort of thing. |
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If you had struggled for years as a conceptual artist, you could actually get that in the Tate Modern. As it is they would have you down (probably correctly) as a chancer. |
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The intro to this idea and the idea itself seem to be 2 different things. As far as I can tell the text of the idea involved making a very strange noise. I like the idea of creating visible patters with sound waves better. |
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I wonder if a cloud chamber could be used? Alternatively, those cracked oil smoke machines might work in an environment without breezes. The other possibility would be to do this underwater with a suspension of neutrally buoyant semiopaque particles. |
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