very neat liquid magnet sculpture

[thesk8nmidget]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6SB4JvJoU

[buffo]

That is some seriously cool shit!

Adam

[James Lehman]

I have only seen one thing that is in any way similar to this. It's a piece that is here in Akron, in The Inventor's Hall of Fame Museum. It's not liquid, it's dust, but it's pretty neat!

James.

[platinum]

I wonder if it could be beat matched somehow...

I remember seeing that a while back and picturing a setup where a camera was put on it and it was illuminated by (also beat-matched) LED lights or something.

[thesk8nmidget]

a giant 15 ft tall one would be a great addition to any party or event!

[platinum]

a giant 15 ft tall one would be a great addition to any party or event!

I wonder if that's possible. I bet it would be cost-prohibitive.. -and it might scare people or give them seizures as it would look too awesome!

[James Lehman]

I wonder if it could be beat matched somehow...

I remember seeing that a while back and picturing a setup where a camera was put on it and it was illuminated by (also beat-matched) LED lights or something.

The piece in Akron is driven by sound and music.

And it has several zones that mirror and mimic each other.

If you make this thing any bigger, I bet it takes magnitudes more electromagnetic energy to lift the goop. That's pretty heavy stuff, I bet.

James.

[dsli_jon]

Hey Kats -

The piece in Akron is driven by sound and music.

OK, so - here's my idea - first, check out these 3 vids (first one is really bitchin...sorry about the 'Enigma', but hang in there - the second-half is WILD...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMtv-iZxmsM&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5ATz5e6T18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDgyuL2jd7k

Can you IMAGINE what you'd get if you shot WL scanned atmos / lumia fx off this stuff???

...Imagine a speaker-magnet-driven set-up under a big basin of this stuff (best layout for this??? - dunno...), so you could produce music-induced wave-forms / patterns / spikes, etc, and simultaneously have musical-accompaniment (as a 'show') on an initially-flat plane...which, then as it was 'shaped' by the changing waves of sound-driven mag fields, you would have music-synced distortions and waveforms / spikes, etc to reflect the laser-scans... (yes, a lot of experimentation would need to be done to design the optimal field-control system to 'sculpt' the distortions, etc...)

...Basically, the goal would be a sound-controlled 'liquid bounce mirror'... kind of similar to the really old-skool way of producing lissajous / etc off a mirror glued to a speaker coil, with a single-beam shining on it - only here, you could add the dimension of reflecting scanned laser light off the distorted waves / spikes, etc...

...You with me??? I mean, yeah, the stuff IS black, BUT highly specular, so not sure how much absorbtion vs reflection you'd get - probably somewhat determined by color (???) and angle of incidence...

...Also, not sure if you'd get any 'prismatic' separation - would likely be easier with a solid-state RGB, where the 3 beams are already somewhat disparate (vs a much more inherently-convergent ion-WL) but I'd bet you could get some really WILD fx off this stuff with an RGB as it distorted each individual-line off the 'morphing' mag-fields...

...Imagine what you'd get if you enveloped THIS sculpture with a WL cone-scan - rotating in the opposite direction / changing directions, etc - it would get reflected hundreds of times as it interacted with the 'spikes' here - all constantly changing shape, size, speed and angle - then, you could color-mod, and if you did end up getting prismatic separation with an RGB, you might get a lot of lumia-like color-sep - man, I bet it would be really, really radical!!

...I'd bet you'd see fx like this incredible grating we had one time, but MOVING (and PS - you should have seen this grating with a WL - the orders were unbelievable with 7-8 lines!!! thousands of points!!!)

Eye-safe? Well, would depend on laser-power used, of course, and to some degree, your scan-angle-to-start with, but in a dimly-lit room, and good hazing, I bet you could make one helluva show with this stuff + a WL...

I posture this cause I have seen some really amazing abstracts off a lake-reflected beam (pix below...) while 'on holiday' up in Canada a few years back (and before any 'safety-pups' jump down my throat, YES, we spotted for planes, etc - besides, this was at like 3 am, so nothing was in the skies but mosquitos...though I can't answer as to how many sturgeon we prolly blinded! ) - totally mezmerizing - produced aurora-borealis-like shapes / fx - we watched it for hours (...course, the tequila / beers / campfire helped but it was really, really, really cool...)

Anyhoo, wish I had time to play with this - *sigh* - maybe someday..

...Meantime - any takers???

peace...
J

[James Lehman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMtv-iZxmsM&NR=1

At 2:45 this video becomes the most errotic, non-erotic thing I've ever seen! Pure sexless sex. Awesome!

James.

[chad]

Ferrofluid is fun to play with. The only problem with it is right up there in stain-mess factor as ferric chloride. It makes a horrific mess, but can make some really neat displays.

chad