Capturing Sound Frequenicies by Isaiah Palmeri

Please play the video at the end of this post very loudly to get the full effect !

The work I’ve done in foundry from the very beginning has come from an interest in the idea of a thought translated into an object. While I understand that this is just the nature of most art. I found an opportunity to try to literally do this with sound. This was inspired by videos I saw online where people used cornstarch and water to animate the cornstarch.

I did an initial test with an aluminum open face mold that had really no success trying to move the metal.

I then moved onto a series of test with the foundry wax on aluminum foil. The results from this were a bit more successful in that I got the wax to jump. I discovered that frequencies below 100 Htz and above 40 Htz produced the best results.

For the next set of tests with metal i used a larger amplifier and bigger speakers. While aluminum finally jiggled there were barely any noticeable changes in the other metals.

I went back to the wax and did another series of tests but this time on white paper.

I discovered that the paper suck to the wax in such a way that made the wax move without leaving the page.

I realized that for these images to really come to life I needed to add color. So I added food die.

Another series of test with metal produced a few more ripples and resulted in a series of metal discs. To me the surfaces of these discs provide a source of curiosity, there was the chance that they were altered by the sound to some degree.

In my final presentation I compiled a video of all the effects, pairing it with the installed work stations in the gallery. My hope was that the viewer drawn in by the video might discover the process through the display of the work station.

While my original ideas about capturing thoughts are not inherently present in the final work. I think that the idea of a moment being captured in metal and wax shows though in the final instillation

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoiDa6c_aBU&feature=youtu.be 

Work made during Junior Sculpture Foundry Fall '15 with Professor Coral Penelope Lambert