The Chladni Plate –
Sound has always fascinated me. I remember being introduced to an oscillator at school. I was completely mesmerised by the waves generated by sounds. Later in life I discovered Chladni Plates.
The Chladni Plate was named after its German inventor Ernst Chladni, who was an early pioneer of experimental acoustics. He discovered that by using a violin bow to vibrate metal plates covered in sand, a number of distinct patterns emerged. The patterns would change with the pitch and the tone of the sound vibrations.
The idea of sound creating hidden patterns is something that I want to explore. I am intrigued by anything hidden or unseen. The Chladni plate patterns, in my opinion, falls nicely into this bracket. The patterns of sound are hidden until they are revealed by the vibrating sand covered plates.
In order to experiment with this phenomena, I decided to source an authentic Chladni plate kit with a bow. Some Chladni plate kits come with electronic tone generators. However I wanted to remain as authentic as possible and I was really excited to find someone who made these kits as close to the original as possible.
Below is my Chladni Plate unboxing video and as I am looking at sound, I deliberately left the original audio in tact. I particularly like the sound of the box crunching and the paper scrunching as I remove the individual objects. This is in fact quite an important part of the video as I may well recycle this audio in another related experiment.
The Chladni Plate Unboxing – Best watched with sound turned on!
Once I had unboxed my Chladni plate, I needed to assemble it. I read the instructions and below is a 10 minute video of me putting together the kit. The time-lapse condensed the video into just under a minute. Again, I deliberately left the original audio in tact, as I may use this at a later date. I later found out that there were a number of key issues that I had missed when reading the instructions. I hadn’t added a couple of washers. This has now been rectified. I think this will probably greatly assist me greatly with my pattern creation.
The Chladni Kit Assembly – turn on sound
The Chladni Kit – Early Experimentation – turn on sound
Now I had the kit assembled, I began to experiment with bowing the plate. This was to vibrate it so that the sand formed patterns. Below is a time-lapse video of my early experimentation. The audio once again is intact even though it is speeded up. This time-lapse video condenses down 24 minutes into just under a minute. As I had not properly assembled the kit, the video below is not a very good representation of the sound or patterns. It is also not a good idea to pour the sand directly over the plate. Instead it should be gently sprinkled using pinched fingers, just like sprinkling salt. Getting these things wrong sadly undermines the beauty and the precision of the kit and does not do it justice. I will be rectifying this and I hope to shoot some beautiful and more representative footage.
Further Experimentation
The light this morning was particularly beautiful so I thought it would be a good time to shoot some of the Chladni patterns that I made. I experimented with different lighting and focussing techniques. I also deliberately used a very soft focus on the plates to add a slight ‘air of mystery’ around them. I wanted to shoot my patterns in a way that I had not encountered before. Generally these images are shot straight on under quite harsh lighting conditions. I wanted to break this mould and produce something that I felt was more aesthetically pleasing. Below are the results from shooting further experiments.
Conclusions
I was pleased that I managed to create some patterns. I would have done a time-lapse, but sadly my phone was broken. Therefore I had no easy way of recording one as I was using my DSLR camera to do the shoot.
Making the patterns is an art form in itself. I will be speaking with the creator of my kit to get hints and tips for improving my technique.
I only actually managed two patterns. Below is an image showing the start of a third pattern but I could not easily replicate it. I have decided to explore Chladni plates further but only after I have taken some advice on how to make more patterns.
The Chladni Kit
My Favourite Image
