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Video25 Nov 2016Art & installationsRigs & DIY

Kymat's Sonic Water: a camera, a dish of water and a live feed

Sven Meyer and Kim Pörksen's interactive installation films a vibrating water container and projects the result.

Watch on YouTube ↗KYMAT · Sven Meyer and Kim Pörksen · 4 min

Kymat is the name Sven Meyer uses for his Hamburg-based cymatics laboratory and live shows. This 2016 video documents Sonic Water, an interactive installation made with Kim Pörksen and shown at an Olympus photography event in Berlin. A camera films a container of water that is vibrated by sound, and the water surface acts as a three-dimensional sculpture that turns the sound into moving images.

The set-up is close to what our own studio builds: vessel, driver, lighting, camera, projection. What Kymat does well is the lighting, which is what makes a water surface readable at all; without it you see nothing. The video does not give technical details, but the credits list the collaborators and the venue.

A second Kymat video from 2020 shows an interactive version at Milan Design Week driven by a hidden theremin, which is a good example of letting visitors make the sound themselves.

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