Magic between Music and Magnet.

Japanese artists Sachiko Kodama and Yasushi Miyajima have used superparamagnetic nanoparticles to create an alien but beautiful sculpture "Morpho Towers, an artwork using ferrofluids controlled by magnetic fields. Or in their own description as "an autonomous transformation of the material itself:

sometimes it seems like a horn,


sometimes a fir tree,


and sometimes even like the Tower of Babel."

According to Wikipedia, ferrofluid is a liquid which becomes strongly polarised in the presence of a magnetic field.

A ferrofluid in a magnetic field showing normal-field instability caused by a neodymium magnet beneath the dish.



Let's take a closer look.

The body of the tower was made by a new technique called
“ferrofluid sculpture”
that enables artists to create dynamic sculptures with fluid materials.
The movement of the spikes in the fluid is controlled dynamically on the surface by adjusting the power of the electromagnet.

The shape of the iron body is designed as helical so that the fluid can move to the top of the helical tower when the magnetic field is strong enough.

Fluid moves synthetically with the music, as if it breathes, and the condition of the fluid's surface emerges as autonomous and complex.

In an interview, the creator of Morpho Tower- Sachiko Kodama explains that she was just struck by the beauty of the ferrofluids, especially by their moving spikes.
Spikes symbolize "life" and "growth", and can sometimes also symbolize "violence". She was just very drawn to the paradoxical beauty and ugliness of the ferrofluids; in other words, she was struck by their ambiguity.

Sachiko's first "Morpho Tower" was not complicated. She created the program herself; the fluid simply moves according to the environmental sound level. If a person looks toward the "Morpho Tower" and talks in a loud voice, very big spikes appear quickly. But, soon, she felt like she wanted to introduce some kinds of "rhythm" (beat or breathing) characteristic of animals.

So, she began collaborating with Yasushi Miyajima, as he knew of a special technique involving the use of digital music metadata, wherein music could be used to create "rhythm" and emotion-like movement of the ferrofluids.


This is it,
Morpho Tower.

the Magic between Music and Magnet.

Simply MAGNIFICENT! (: