NEW YORK CITY — When science and music come together, it can be a beautiful sight.
Musician Nigel Stanford demonstrated this in his video “Cymatics: Science vs. Music." He worked with director Shahir Duad to create stunning patterns using the right tones and camera tricks.
He was inspired to create the music video in part by a documentary he watched about a neurological condition called synesthesia, where people’s brains interpret sensory input in a different way than most people. Some people with the condition reportedly see letters and numbers in color, while others taste sounds.
“This got me thinking that it would be cool to make a music video where every time a sound plays, you see a corresponding visual element,” Stanford wrote on his website. “Many years later, I saw some videos about cymatics, the science of visualizing audio frequencies, and the idea for the video was born.”
A series of videos on Stanford’s website explain the science behind each element shown in the video. He said his team experimented with audio frequencies to find the right tones to make the shapes.
For example, he said the patterns on the “speaker dish” — comprised of a petri dish filled with frozen vodka placed on a speaker are waves generated by the vibrations of the speaker. They created the appearance of “frozen waves” by playing with tones and camera speeds.