Project Description
Our Idea is mixing a very old print technique called marbling and a physical device that generates animated visuals along with musical inputs. Marbling is an ancient method born in Japan around twelfths century (Suminagashi, or ‘floating ink’), that allows the creation of astonishing abstract patterns by floating inks into a liquid surface. Water’s capillarity expands and merges inks bloats and creates unexpected aberrations of the original pattern. We have always been fascinated by this technique and we especially like how the ink moves through the liquid surface. We wanted to have some control over this animations, so we designed a way to trigger and automate this process and use it in Audiovisual/VJ performances. I attach a little presentation with some sketches of how that is supposed to work because it’s easier to understand it visually. Basically it’s a container with a liquid surface and there’s a grid with lots of ink droppers on top of it. Each dropper is triggered by a different range sensibility of the audio spectrum, so while a sound input is heard, a visual output is generated. And each time the composition of colors will be unique; even if the sound input is the same, the visual will be influenced by the previous samples. So as the marbling printing technique, this device will allow us to maintain partial control over the design’s composition while enjoying the spontaneous flow of the colors on water.
Project Images
marbling machine blueprint
That's the visual representation of how the device is going to generate marbling visuals triggered by an audio input
Tags
animation, 2D, music