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Link12 Nov 2014Rigs & DIYMusic & performanceLight & strobes

The six rigs behind the most-watched cymatics video

Nigel Stanford's own page breaks his 2014 film into its experiments, and admits the music came last.

Open at nigelstanford.com ↗Nigel Stanford · Nigel Stanford · 6 min

Stanford's Cymatics page lists exactly what is in the video: a Chladni plate, a speaker dish of liquid, a hose pipe shot against the camera frame rate, ferrofluid moved by magnets, a Ruben's tube of propane flames, and a Tesla coil, plus a plasma ball he plays on camera. Only the first four are cymatics in any strict sense; the tube shows pressure nodes in a gas column and the coil is there for spectacle.

The production detail is the one worth stealing: the music was composed after filming, not before. The rigs were shot doing what they do, and the track was written to fit. That is the opposite of how most sound-reactive work is made, and it explains why the visuals never look like they are lagging the beat.

The video was published on 12 November 2014 and has since passed 54 million views.

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