Project 1 was an attempt to do some cool audio representation. My first idea was to shatter a wine glass using sound in the ACTLAB. It was surprisingly difficult to research the steps to doing soon, but after finding some detailed descriptions of the conditions and equipment necessary to do so, I ruled it out as being impractical.

What I settled on was something that was both cool, and easily recreated using equipment I could obtain. I was going to make a mixture of cornstarch and water, creating a non-Newtonian fluid and bring it to life using sound. My first attempted involved a 15inch woofer obtained from ACTLABbie Dan Hemingson, and a small sub amp borrowed from Joey. Setting up the equipment wasn’t difficult, but getting the mixture of cornstarch and water just right proved tough. My first attempt in the ACTLAB resulted in the watery cornstarch leaking through the cone of the woofer and combined with the large excursions of the low frequencies resulted in the woofer cone separating from the coil.

The second try involved a new woofer and new amplifier from Dan. This time I was careful to find the needed proportions of the fluid, and was careful to use a plastic barrier large enough to make sure no fluid leaked on to the delicate cone. It was a success, and the fluid jumped to live, wiggling around like an alien worm.