What if one was to go into space or an artificial zero gravity with some speakers, tone generating equipment and water ... 3D cymatic patterns! Has this been done? If not it would be awesome to see.

Sound waves don't exist in a vacuum afaik. What about the cymatics of x and gamma rays?

They wouldn't be in a vacuum only in zero gravity like inside of the shuttle or a aircraft simulation.

X ray and gamma ray cymatics would be pretty cool too.

Oh ok I see what you are saying now. Hard to imagine what would really happen.

You would need to contain the liquid obviously. If you had a driver emitting a certain frequency from one angle, it would push all the liquid in one direction, and then you have the shape of the containment factors.

How about this... A translucent sphere filled with liquid, with 6 drivers placed at a distance around it perfectly set up. It would take some serious engineering, but it could be done. Omnidirectional liquid cymatics.

Haha...This is fun to toy around with in the mind.

I didn't think about the sound waves pushing it around. It would have to be set up quite nicely but I really think it is possible.

This is the video that gave me the idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s63JXdsL5LU

Actually now that I look at the video again he blows on the water and it doesn't really move too much so I would assume you could easily get some nice patterns before it began coming apart or flying around the room.

The best way to get consistent results would be to have a driver on top, bottom, and all sides, that's why I said 6. Eventually in zero gravity one driver just isn't going to give accurate readings.

1 driver = 2D

6 drivers = 3D

They would have to be perfectly set up, though.

The next tricky factor to all of this is, how do you get an omnidirectional recording?
You might need multiple cameras synchronized and then edited together somehow?
Then how do you view it in omnidirection? You can't on a flatscreen monitor unless it was played back in a computer simulation which you could also adjust your perspective. Would be cool if you could project it back as a hologram.

I agree more speakers is the only way to go. Thats a good rule for life in general

I would rather be there

It seems to me that if you had this sort of omnidirectional speaker setup, that the speakers would cancel out/construct through interference that you wouldn't have from one sound source.

You have a good point bringing up "phase". It would have to just be designed perfectly and automated that it quantizes the signals if that is even possible, I do not know.

And also you may be right about multiple signals altering the pure cymatic pattern of the single frequency itself.

The space that surrounds the set-up would also have to be acoustically dead.

P.S This was a really good idea:
11:12:50 ‹Global› you have a sphere with water in it. In the middle of the sphere you have a spherical speaker. the cymatic patterns are projected onto the outer sphere, and though it wouldn't be 3D in perhaps the original way you may have been thinking, it would be the 2D pattern imposed on a 3D surface

What if you just had one speaker and carefully captured/injected the water in the middle of a glass tube to capture the sound, placed it over the speaker and cranked it to 11?

Or another idea; you could rig up some sort of plate to the speaker and run a thin wire from it through the suspended water to hold it in place and the vibrations could travel through the wire.

They don't use multidirectional speakers with regular sand cymatics they just place a metal plate over a speaker, granted it's a little different but I think the lack of gravity would be a little more forgiving maybe allowing easier formation of the shape.

The wire idea sounds like it could hold some merit, but it may take some considerable amplitude to transduce the vibrations from the speaker into the plate into the wire into the water.

I understand they don't use multidirectional speakers with regular cymatics, but it's specifically because of the presence of gravity that their current method is feasible. They are banking on the sand remaining on the plate and the plate on the speaker with the aid of gravity. Gravity holds the medium together (be it sand or water or whatever) in a taut fashion so that the particles can regularly interact without simply spreading out and killing the cymatic effect.

In terms of the glass tube idea, unless you had the tube anchored in some way, the vibrations from the speakers would simply send the glass tube flying ever further away with the cymatic effect ever diminishing.

I just came up with an interesting sort of experiment that we can do on earth (I'm thinking it would work with or without gravity) and would possibly create these 3D cymatics, archaic architect. Now I can't remember where I read it, and I never saw it, so I can't vouch entirely for the validity of it, but I remember reading that certain mantras chanted in a room full of smoke would create patterns in the smoke. Now, they didn't even say what the mantras were so trying to test this out with mantras could take a lifetime, however if we were to use a fog machine (or screw it: smoke out a room to your heart's content ) to thoroughly cloud up a small room with speakers and cranked some ancient solfeggio frequencies (which are supposed to have some of the highest affinities for creating optimal cymatic patterns), then you might just get a first hand look at multidimensional cymatics without having to leave Earth's orbit.

^The acoustics of the room would come into play and diminish the accuracy of them.

That is an interesting thought, however. I have seen cymatics in sand from subwoofers placed in them, but never in smoke. I do wonder kind of experiments could be feasibly conducted with this medium, it does open up a new layer of possibility.

How about this:

Get a stack of plastic sheet protectors, the thinner and more transparent the better. Fill each with just enough of your excitatory media to create a thin layer covering most of the sheet. Buy a soft wood picture frame slightly smaller than the sheet protectors. Get some wooden skewers. Drill four skewer-gauge holes all the way through the picture frame, one in each corner. Stack the filled sheets neatly on top of the frame. Pierce each corner of the stack with a skewer and fasten it into the holes. The sheets should be into the corners picture frame. Place the frame on top of your speaker and play a sound.

You should be able to see the 3D cymatic shape emerge from the different patterns in each layer. If your plastic sleeves are too opaque, use a powder that fluoresces under UV light, and a strong UV light. Do the experiment in a dark room. You should be able to see the pattern light up and take shape.

Very novel solution. Sounds feasible.

Sheet protectors: too flexible. But maybe a stack of rigid transparent sheets? They would need to be rigid enough to transfer the vibrations.

Back to the sphere: yes, a spherical speaker in the center, as omnidirectionally equal as possible. But you would need something in the water besides just water, or there would be no pattern... Just vibrating water. By having a second ingredient- maybe a granular solid of similar but slightly different density to water- you would have the two ingredients necessary to create a pattern. On the speaker plate experiments, your pattern is made of sand and spaces between the sand... In a water filled sphere, there would be no space.

Another consideration: perhaps the cymatic patterns that appear on a flat plate are possible precisely because it's only 2D. The lack of available degrees of movement could be limiting movement in creative ways. With a third dimension of movement, the pattern may be so complex as to just appear chaotic.

But I'd still love to see this in action!

Vibrating water should actually be sufficient to create patterns. It's just another cymatic medium. Perhaps diffracting light through the water would help to accentuate the patterns.

Good point. The vibrations would be embodied in the form of higher and lower density regions in the water. I wonder if an fMRI would pick that up?

I'm also starting to think that gravity might not be such a big deal- think of how NASA uses a big tank of water for zero-G simulations. Perhaps any small effect from gravity could be mathematically corrected in the MRI imaging.

Alternatively, this while thing might be possible to simulate computationally... Try out a few combinations of speaker placement and number, different fluid densities, different tank composition and mass...