A speaker made by artist Dakd Jung, spotted by Gizmodo, view music with ferrofluid, a liquid filled with small magnetic particles. Ferofluid, a viscous black spot, reacts to an electromagnetic device and dances in sync with the played sounds.
The video shows Jung’s process of putting the speaker together: treating the glass container so that the ferrofluid doesn’t stick, sanding the 3D printed case and wiring the electromagnetic device. The full prototype in action is a little less fascinating than its original test, which is shown in the video as the blob breaks, but Jung says the speaker is still in development. He also used ferrofluid in works of art, including a huge ferrofluid panel and a ferrofluid “pond.”
Ferrofluid was originally developed by NASA to move fuel to rocket engines without the aid of gravity. It didn’t work for this purpose, but it managed to look cool as hell and have other practical uses. It can be used for speaker dampers, as a lubricant on ball bearings or as a sealant on a hard disk. One day it could even be used in biomedicine.
The liquid was used to view the music before, as in the video below, but having it in a closed container is much more appealing because it is a very messy substance. In addition, it’s just more fun to have a lava lamp that responds to your songs than a tub of liquid to cool next to your speaker system.