‘Dancing Colors’, A Beautiful Photo Series That Makes Sound Visible Through Color

In his brilliant photo series Dancing Colors, Swiss artist Fabian Oefner (previously) sought to make sound visible through color. Oefner created these gorgeous images with such simple items such as plastic wrap, color crystals, and a home speaker.

I mounted a thin plastic foil on top of the membrane of a common loud speaker. I then added hundreds of colorful, tiny crystals onto the foil. Every time now that I would play a sound through the speaker, the vibration caused by that sound will make the crystals to jump up and down, forming into these peculiar looking forms and figures you see in the images. Depending on the frequency, pitch and volume of the tone, the figures change their appearance. So now, the audible signal, the sound wave, has transformed into a visual signal, the shapes you see on the images of “Dancing Colors”…sound has become visible.

images via Fabian Oefener