Martin Klimas’s Photographs Paint Disturbed by Sound

German photographer Martin Klimas photographs sound using paint. He starts by putting different colored paint on top of some translucent material, underneath which is a speaker. When he cranks up the volume, the carefully selected mixtures of paint explode from the surface shooting into the air, intermixing to creating beautiful patterns. Klimas photographs these motion and each photo becomes an analogue representation of the music.

Martin Klimas has captured portrait of many different songs —from Miles Davis to Kraftwerk. He spent six months and about 1,000 shots to get the required results and also spent 18.5 gallons of paint and two blown speakers.

Klimas rose to prominence in the art world four years ago for a series of photos that captured porcelain figurines just as they shattered. In addition to the obvious debt owed to abstract expressionism, Klimas says his major influence was Hans Jenny, the father of cymatics, the study of wave phenomena. The resulting images are Klimas’s attempt to answer the question “What does music look like?”

[via NYTimes]