Darwin As An Opera

Swedish rock group The Knife, who's Heartbeats was repopularized by Jose Gonzalez, has recently gone is a wholly new direction.  They've been commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to write the music for their opera based on Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species.  In collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, they will release the studio version of the opera entitled Tomorrow, In A Year, on March 1, 2010.  A streaming version of "Colouring Of Pigeons" can be heard here.

Chladni Plates

Invented by German physicist Ernst Chladni in the late 1700's to illustrate the patterns of two  dimensional sound waves.  They are created by stroking a bow against the edge of a steel plate that is covered with a thin layer of sand.  The plates' unique vibrations will cause the sand to move and settle in various nodal patterns; nodes are the points of absolutle zero vibrations.  The more complex the vibration is, the more elaborate the resulting pattern will be.  Chladni Plate techniques are commonly used to aide in the design of acoustic instruments such as violins, guitars, and cellos. 

I love that when I'm searching for something in Google Images, I often stumble upon something wholly unrelated yet amazing.  Chladni plates are one of these.  They have a couple videos online showing the technique in motion which are pretty cool.