While I love Love Hulténs creations I think the article (and headline) does not emphasize enough the origin of these ferrofluid visualizers:
https://www.burnslap.me/26
In fairness, the author does explicitly mention DAKD Jung as the inspiration in the fourth paragraph - it's the third video down.
It's clear to me that the reason this article exists is the opinion that the sum of Love's craftmanship and ferrofluid visualization is greater than its parts.
Agreed. I am curious how good Hulténs’ visualizers are. IIRC there was a good deal of engineering that went into Dakd Jung’s to make it stand the test of time and plenty of experiments on audio response across genres. Specifically, I recall Dakd Jung saying that they spent a lot of time on a glass coating for the inside of the bottle because eventually the particles begin to stick to the glass.
It's kind of boring. It makes the same ring-of-fluid shape, or just random little blobs. It's not as representative of the sounds being played as it is just forming around magnetic lines of flux that don't really display the sound. The device construction is what is pretty neat here, but the ferrofluid display is a bit lacking in coolness unless you've never seen ferrofluids reacting to electromagnets before (and maybe I'm jaded because I've seen it plenty of times, and it's practically always the same effect).
Other than looking neat, is there any meaningful information that can be gleaned from an FF display?
You can do the obvious with an oscilloscope, but ferrofluid appears as random blobs floating in space. The artist seems to have acknowledged that, as there is a smaller scope in the bottom right of one of their machines.
Without playing with one myself it would be hard to answer objectively, but I can imagine this being on the end of my MicroBrute+pedals chain to give me spatial feedback on how big a sound is. I use the brute for all kinds of stuff but it would be cool to see bass lines and how different knobs affect the sound.
It could be a really cool Winamp visualizer for a track though and if nothing else it's cool for that!
Don't ferrofluids break down in to the surrounding liquid over time? Or is that mitigated by treating the glass as was mentioned in the bluetooth speaker video from the article?
Ferrofluid has been used in certain high end speakers for quite a while, it can break down or dry out eventually but generally lasts well over a decade in that application.
The glass treatment is just to prevent the ferrofluid from sticking.
Thank you. I remember seeing someone had made a clock face using ferrofluids, and wanted to give something like that a go myself, but was put off hearing the information I was questioning.
I would really love to make a ferrofluid visualizer but instead of being part of the signal path, it’s a desk knick-knack with a microphone and wall power… Hmm
That guy really understands how to get timbre out of his synths. Damn what an ear.
That's really impressive, and just the beginning. Wait until dozens of people have had a decade to fool around with his base concep. I'd like to see the ferrofluid in 3d. It is naturally a 3d material but his displays are ~2.5d. I'm thinking a big sphere in the middle of the room, kinda like at the end of Netflix's "DARK".
Readit News
It's clear to me that the reason this article exists is the opinion that the sum of Love's craftmanship and ferrofluid visualization is greater than its parts.
Also reminded me of this ferrofluid clock my buddy built back in the day: http://www.hellorhei.com
You can do the obvious with an oscilloscope, but ferrofluid appears as random blobs floating in space. The artist seems to have acknowledged that, as there is a smaller scope in the bottom right of one of their machines.
It could be a really cool Winamp visualizer for a track though and if nothing else it's cool for that!
[1] A Reconfigurable Ferromagnetic Input Device https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
The glass treatment is just to prevent the ferrofluid from sticking.
That's really impressive, and just the beginning. Wait until dozens of people have had a decade to fool around with his base concep. I'd like to see the ferrofluid in 3d. It is naturally a 3d material but his displays are ~2.5d. I'm thinking a big sphere in the middle of the room, kinda like at the end of Netflix's "DARK".
He literally just builds new chassis composing multiple existing off the shelf synths. He does not build from 0