Cymatics of Life

Water has no fixed form, yet set in motion by different frequencies it reveals distinctive patterns. The wall is a dish of water computed in real time: a wave equation integrated on the GPU, driven the way a loudspeaker shakes a tray of water (Faraday forcing), then photographed with physically based optics of refracted caustics, soft-box reflections and absorption inside the water.

Visitors scan the QR code beside the wall and answer five questions: how much water a day uses, which sound of water is most calming, the first image that water brings to mind, the first touch of water in the morning, and the one thing they most want to do for water after leaving. Each answer moves one axis of the water, volume, texture, colour, detail and boundary, and together they become a frequency of one’s own. The Water Ripple Mandala appears first on the phone, then flows onto the twelve-metre wall.

Every half hour the wall runs one complete cycle: from the first vibration, light breaks on the surface, fish take shape and swim past, the view pulls back into a whole sea being drawn along, folds into a vortex and fades to black and white. At the moment only black and white remain, light is taken apart, and the colours of the whole world rise again out of the smallest dispersion.

Cymatics is the physics that makes sound visible. In 1787 the German physicist Ernst Chladni drew a bow across a metal plate sprinkled with sand, and the grains arranged themselves into symmetrical, precise geometry. In 1967 the Swiss scientist Hans Jenny named the phenomenon and, sweeping an oscillator through frequencies, watched the figures on one medium grow into new forms one after another. The lower the frequency, the simpler the figure, gathering into rings and crosses; the higher it goes, the finer the pattern splits, approaching a mandala-like lattice. Vibration decides the shape, and the shape remembers the vibration.

Sound is vibration. When it enters a dish of water, the water answers with the few ways it can move with the least effort; what those ways look like in space is the figure we see. This work replaces sound with people as the source of the driving, and lets the whole wall become the vibrating body itself.

Five questions with four choices each; each question moves one axis of the water. Every row below is the same water (same other answers, same seed) with only that answer changed: volume and detail shift subtly, texture and colour are plain to see.

On opening day, visitor guides to the expo began to mention the work's interaction: Smile Taiwan's entry on zone A10, Life Around Water, tells readers they can make their own water mandala online and see it rise onto the big screen. The expo's official page for zone A10 lists the curved screen as "Curved-screen algorithmic art: MONOLAB, Che-Yu Wu".