28 notes

December 17, 2023 9:21 PM

Watch this RAINBOW Pendulum Wave (Use Headphones!) [2h]

I don't know if headphones are required, that's just the title of the piece.

The period of this is 15m, so this video is eight cycles.

Maybe something like this is calming this time of year, if you're dealing with holiday bullshit.

posted by hippybear (12 comments total)

Headphones are good for the stereo separation - it's playing the sound on left or right depending on where the ball bounces off the edge
posted by aubilenon at 11:02 PM on December 17, 2023

Real-life version
posted by Rhomboid at 11:04 PM on December 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

I was watching this earlier today (lacking cable TV or other subcriptions, yt is my primary video source)

I liked how somewhere between every periodic sync-up there was order hiding in the apparent total chaos
posted by torokunai at 11:21 PM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

They say some doors once opened never close... it's been decades but going through a full 15 minute cycle of that was strongly evocative of what I remember a ketamine trip being like.
posted by protorp at 6:10 AM on December 18, 2023

I'm grateful for the comment that it's a 15 minute cycle - I likely would have watched the whole thing without that info.
posted by skullhead at 6:22 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

The "most replayed" bumps are interesting.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:46 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

They’re making our pendulum waves out of people!

(self link)
posted by sixswitch at 7:23 AM on December 18, 2023

They’re making our pendulum waves out of people!

Watching that video made my knees hurt.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:24 AM on December 18, 2023

If you focus--this will sound like I'm setting up a joke, I promise I'm not--if you focus on just one central part of the rainbow (I chose the cyan bit) and watch without blinking for a while, and then look over at a blank wall, your eyes will do strange things to you.
posted by mittens at 8:36 AM on December 18, 2023

I love this. My senior thesis for composition school incorporated this kind of system - asynchronous patterns of notes across different instruments whose consonance and dissonance relied on the underlying math as opposed to intentionality. Similar to Brian Eno's Music For Airports. The conservatory muckity-mucks didn't like it ("Too minimalist!" they opined) but I've always been a fan of gears turning as they will.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:50 AM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: your eyes will do strange things to you.
posted by hippybear at 12:52 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love these Pendulum sound videos. I keep them on in the background.
posted by Liquidwolf at 5:31 PM on December 18, 2023