Cymatic Ground (Alvaro Cassinelli & Tobias Klein 2022) is an interactive audio-visual installation (and the “Second Garden” in Klein’s larger Three Gardens exhibition (Tobias Klein, 2022). Located within the buildings of Oi! (Oil Street Art Space in Hong Kong), the second garden is a hybrid between an architectural representation and a sonic scultpture. It is an interactive model – an installation in which the audience can explore the relationship between shape, geometry, resonance and energy. This garden takes reference from the dry stone garden concept, where the absence of water is made visible through carefully composed arrangements of rocks and gravel that is raked to represent ripples and waves. The second garden is an industrial garden made from laser-cut and acid etched steel plates. It is a resonating, ephemeral garden where sand is carried as liquid flowing in reverberating patterns. Combining Art and Science in interdisciplinary collaboration, we created a sonic extension of the landscape as a liquid shapeless continuum, made visible through vibrations. The work articulates the invisible frequencies within each material and shape, where energies brought into harmonies create overlaying vibration, agitation and movement. These natural frequencies show the interplay between geometry and sound. Like the coastal lines are slowly shaped by the energies carried by the waves of the ocean, the vibrations in the Cymatic Ground uncover the invisible patterns of energies flowing through the landscape.
The artwork is able to exhibit very complex Chladni patterns thanks to a micro-controller based audio feedback loop that injects energy into the system thus enabling for the complete formation of the sand pattern. Hidden electronics under the table analyse mechanical vibrations (through accelerometers and microphones) and estimate the fundamental from the series of harmonics. Energy is then injected on the corresponding plate using electromagnetically actuated “bass shakers”.
Exhibition History
- The Three Gardens(*), by Tobias Klein & Alvaro Cassinelli (on the Second Garden), Oil Street Art Space [24.5.2022 — 30.10.2022]