Oscillate, Mesmerizing Animation of Increasingly Complex Patterns

“OSCILLATE” by artist Daniel Sierra is a mesmerizing animation in which a simple sine wave gradually evolves into more complex patterns. The animation is Sierra’s thesis project for his graduate studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The concept of universal building blocks that can be assembled to form complex structures is something I find very exciting and alluring. Sound follows this concept in that any sound, for example a snare drum or a human voice, can be deconstructed as the summation of varying sine waves; hence making sine waves the building blocks of sound so to speak. This concept, which comes from the Fourier Series (named after Joseph Fourier) was the inspiration for my thesis, “Oscillate”.