A number of years ago I video taped an amazing demonstration of iron filing manipulation choreographed to pop music at a local science museum. I was fascinated by the undulating tree like figures and the dry liquid waves that played across the surface of the tank. I posted the clips I had of the display on to YouTube so others could share in my wonderment. Turns out that this is not a one off display but the work of an artist named David Durlach. One of the comments on the clip pointed to an article on this amazing artist. I had thought the devices were an analog spectrum display but the happens that they are under elaborate computer control. This is an excerpt from the article on Discovermagazine:

This five-minute display is the result of hundreds of hours of programming, not to mention the computer language Durlach had to create to specify the details of choreography. In this language, Durlach not only shifts dust through the three spatial dimensions, he also plays with time, changing the rate at which it appears to flow, moving it forward and backward, to achieve especially fluid motion. One of the interesting things is that you can make time go forward and backward like a sine wave, he says. It’s as if you took the reels of a movie, and instead of rotating them continuously forward you moved them back and forth, woonk-woonk, woonk-woonk. That’s a very cool effect. Durlach goes on to enumerate the different ways you can play with time, and the effects they generate.

Beauty and Magnets
(Thank you Bill Beaty for this lead)