Before streaming services like Spotify came onto the scene, many of us listened to our MP3s using Winamp, which featured a trippy music visualizer that generated colorful animations to accompany our tunes.
Now, artist Dakd Jung has found a way to hark back to those heady days with an innovative Bluetooth speaker, one containing a ferrofluid that appears to dance along to the beat of your music.
You can check out the speaker in action in the video below:
The ferrofluid is housed within a round glass container at the front of the wireless speaker, suspended in a clear liquid. An electromagnet behind this container means that, once your music starts, the ferrofluid begins to pulse, dance, and bounce around the container. Remember the 1997 film Flubber? It looks a little like that.
You can even control how the ferrofluid moves, thanks to a dial on the front of the speaker. This allows you to adjust the specific audio frequencies the ferrofluid responds to – so if you're listening to a really bassy track, you could make the ferrofluid bounce along to the beat.
The speaker itself contains three upward-firing drivers, an amplifier, and a Bluetooth module so you can easily hook it up to your phone, laptop, or tablet wirelessly – though all this tech is hidden away in a 3D printed housing, giving it a decidedly space-age look.
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What is ferrofluid anyway?
Though it may look like a solid living creature, ferrofluid is a liquid that is attracted to the poles of a magnet.
It was invented in 1963 by NASA engineer Steve Papell, in a bid to create rocket fuel that could find its way to a fuel pump in a weightless environment, using a magnetic field to get around the lack of gravity.
Using it as a music visualizer within a Bluetooth speaker is certainly an interesting use for the substance – though, as a piece of art, there's no word on whether the speaker would be available to buy.
Hopefully commercial speaker manufacturers will take note of Jung's ideas and think about incorporating music visualizers into their devices. After all, who wouldn't want a little Flubber-like buddy that sits in your speaker and dances to your music?
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Via Gizmodo
