F L U X

What sounds do these moving abstract images make? Candas Sisman created this nice example of how motion and sound can come together. The objects twist and turn in a way that would be impossible in the real world, yet the sounds they make seem to fit to them perfectly.

F L U X was inspired by the sculptures of Ilhan Koman, and created for the Ilhan Koman Hulda Festival in Istanbul, 22 September - 31 October.

Rolex Tower Soundwave Sculpture

For the entrance hall of the Rolex Tower in Dubai, James Clar created the Rolex Tower Soundwave: a massive sculpture resembling a sound wave, made of stainless steel.

The sculpture is like an abstract name tag for the building, as the artist recorded his own voice, saying “Rolex Tower”. The waveform of this recording in 3D form was then used as blueprint for the sculpture. The sculpture blends in very well with the architectural design of the building:

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Sound sculputres and installations by Zimoun

After sharing Woodworms I with you, I have to show you this one too. In Compilation Video 1.0 Swiss artist Zimoun shows us a nice selection of his wonderful, aesthetic sound installations and sculptures.  

I love the way these constantly moving installations seem to come alive, clumsy and mechanical. The sonic result isn't earth shattering, but the noise created by multiplication of one tiny machine is impressive!

Yes/No by Carsten Nicolai

Yes/No visualizes sound waves traveling through air, in a very detailed sculpture made of steel. CarstenNicolai used recordings of Laurie Anderson saying "yes" and "no" as input while creating this sculpture. You can clearly see the difference between vowels and consonants.

I've known Carsten Nicolai quite well for his work as Alva Noto, and his collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others. He often explores the relationships between the visual and the audible in his projects. He also published a book, Grid Index, earlier this year.

Reflection, a data sculpture by Benjamin Maus

Reflection, a data sculpture by Benjamin Maus, was inspired by a musical piece by Frans de Waard. Software was used to analyze the frequencies of the music. Unlike some projects we looked at before (Cylinder and this project), it's not the visualization of one sound, but of a complete piece of music.

Why do we want to see everything? Some things appear to be more real if you can see them, or touch them. We will not be able to tell what the music sounded like by looking at a sculpture like this. It does look quite fascinating though.

Cylinder: Beautiful sound sculptures

We can't see sound. We can only judge the beauty of it by listening. Sometimes it seems like people who work with sound don't really know or care about visual aesthetics. Look at a website like this, for instance. On the other hand I think the opposite is also true.

Now what if we could look at the sound waves coming out of our speakers? What would it look like? We've seen physical representations of sound before, but this one is absolutely worth looking at. It's so beautiful.

Andy Huntington and Drew Allan took musical and non-musical sounds and ran them through their own software to create a model for their sculptures. The result is Cylinder, a set of eight sculptures. The ones you see here are Market (left) and Breath (right).

Sonic Marshmallows: whisper to me

These Sonic Marshmallows, created by Troika, use sonic reflection and enable you to listen to the other side of the pond. They can transmit and receive a whispering voice over 60 meters without any amplification, using only their shape.

Apart from providing a quite spectacular experience, the Sonic Marshmallows are fun to look at as well. It seems like some giant aliens dropped their candy in the Wat Tyler Country Park in Basildon Essex.

Troika is a multi-disciplinary art and design practice founded in 2003 by Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastien Noel, who met while studying at the Royal College of Art in London.

This is what sound looks like

Sound is made audible air vibrating air molecules. Sound is a form of energy, we can’t see it, and we can only hear it when the volume is high enough and if it exists between 20Hz and 20kHz, the audible range of the human ear.

Sound also moves through liquids though, and Eva Schindling created a computer model which simulates the collision of two sounds in a fluid environment. The resulting form is then modeled out of Styrofoam. Now we have a sound we can touch, but we can’t hear it!