The amazing images that let us 'see' music (and could even help us communicate with dolphins)



High definition camera shows the effect of sound vibrations on water

Revolutionary new device could allow us to talk to dolphins

Have you ever wondered what music might look like? Well these beautiful images are piano notes made visible for the first time thanks to a revolutionary new scientific instrument.

The CymaScope uses a high definition camera to monitor the effect of an individual sound's particular vibrations on purified water.

Due to the high surface tension of the water, the harmonics of a particular sound create a unique imprint and just like snowflakes no two sounds are alike.

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The CymaScope uses a high definition camera to monitor the effect of an individual sound's particular vibrations on purified water, revealing for the first time what piano notes look like

The pictures of the piano notes were commissioned by New Zealand artist Shannon Novak and will be blown up in size for a series of 12 musical canvasses.

He said: 'I have always been fascinated with the translation of that which is invisible, into something visible that individuals can relate to, in particular, the representation of sound through colour and geometric form.



HOW TO SEE MUSIC

The CymaScope uses a high definition camera to monitor the effect of an individual sound's particular vibrations on purified water. Due to the high surface tension of the water, the harmonics of a particular sound create a unique imprint and just like snowflakes no two sounds are alike.

'I saw the use of cymatic technology as one method of such representation and a unique and compelling way of educating individuals about the link between sound, colour, and geometric form'.



Capturing the dynamics of each note involved monitoring the initial strike which is followed by a short plateau and then a long decay phase.

Another project used the Cymascope to visualised the Pink Floyd song Welcome to the Machine.

Development of the CymaScope began in 2002. An early prototype featured a thin, circular, P.V.C. membrane, later latex was used before the breakthrough of using water was made.

Writing on their website cymascope.com co inventors John Stuart Reid and Erik Larson, explain: 'If our eyes could see music we would not see waves, as is commonly believed, but beautiful holographic bubbles, with shimmering kaleidoscopic patterns on their surface.

'The CymaScope allows us to see this previously hidden realm of beauty.



'Music, as sensed by humans, is a delicate tracery of audible frequencies that harmonise with each other and generally please our emotions.'

As development of the Cymascope progressed, the inventors began to realise a raft of potential new applications from Astrophysics to Zoology.



The CymaScope images from A2 (left) and B2 (right on a piano keyboard. The firm has also created music videos revealing the effects in real time

One of the most fascinating of these involves a project which hopes to decypher dolphin language.



The CymaScope can effectively translate the sounds a dolphin makes into pictures so each picture representing a dolphin's word for a given object.



As well as having regular eyes, dolphins also use sound to see and can beam a sound picture of a predator to other dolphins.



By creating a lexicon of dolphin sound pictures researchers hope to hold rudimentary conversations using a computer to convert human words into a dolphin language and the dolphin's reply to human words.

Miami-based dolphin researcher Jack Kassewitz used the CymaScope to recorded dolphin sounds reflected off a range of objects, including a plastic cube, a toy duck and a flowerpot.

He found that the dolphin was able to identify the objects with an 86 per cent accuracy rate when they were replayed.

He then drove to a different facility and replayed the sound pictures to another dolphin and incredibly this second dolphin was able to identified the objects with a similar high success rate suggesting dolphins have a universal language.



Mr Kassewitz explained: 'Dolphins appear to have leap-frogged human symbolic language and instead have evolved a form of communication outside the human evolutionary path.



In a sense we now have a 'Rosetta Stone' that will allow us to tap into their world in a way we could not have even conceived just a year ago. The old adage, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.'

Pink Floyd's -Welcome to the Machine- transcribed to MusicMadeVisible