The sound of an evolving floating sculpture

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to evolve a 2D surface under mean curvature, compute its Laplace-Beltrami eigenmodes, and synthesize these into sound, creating an artistic audiovisual piece exhibited in 2009.

Contribution

It introduces a robust approach to approximate mean curvature and normal directions on evolving surfaces, integrating geometric evolution with spectral analysis for artistic expression.

Findings

Successful evolution of surface under mean curvature

Effective computation of Laplace-Beltrami eigenmodes

Audio synthesis from spectral data

Abstract

Commissioned by MIT's in-house artist Jane Philbrick, we evolve an abstract 2D surface (resembling Marta Pan's 1961 "Sculpture Flottante I") under mean curvature, all the while calculating the eigenmodes and eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the resulting shapes. These are then synthesized into a sound-wave embodying the "swan song" of the surfaces as the evolve to points and vanish. The surface is approximated by a triangulation, and we present a robust approach to approximate the normal directions and the mean curvature. The resulting video and sound-track were parts in the Jane Philbrick's exhibition "Everything Trembles" in Lund, Sweden, 2009.