Cymaticish

Idea

Cymaticish is my attempt at replicating the beautifully intricate patterns and behaviors created by the natural phenomena known as cymatics. 

It looks kind of like cymatics… but it’s not… so, cymatic-ish.

Overview

Cymatics is a deep-dive in itself, but in very basic terms: cymatic patterns are produced when liquids or particles move on a vibrating plate. As this plate vibrates, the particles arrange themselves into different patterns and geometric forms based on the frequency of the vibration and the shape of the plate.

The visual systems I built for Cymaticish aren’t trying to reproduce the laws of physics that drive the patterns in nature. Instead, I decided to try to capture the look and movement of particle cymatics with an image-based approach.

This current version uses a bank of modified images of the surface of Mars from NASA to drive particle systems along with the music and location of my drum sticks.

The look of the drum surface changes with the music, gradually morphing the pattern structures the grains follow as frequencies shift from one chord to the next.

The drum sticks manually manipulate the grains by pushing them around the drum surface.

The kick drum sends pulses through the entire scene, forcing the grains to re-align in ripple patterns.

As the song progresses and intensifies the grains begin to connect, forming organic blobs that are then torn apart and rearranged by the drum sticks and music.

Software / Hardware Used

Visuals: Notch

Music: Ableton and Moog Sirin

Tracking Controller: TouchDesigner with Azure Kinect

More info about the tech side of things will be coming soon