Trippy video sets crow wing movements to audio waveforms

Crows in D experiments with the cymatic patterns of bird wings, pairing up the waveforms of audio tones with the wing cycles of crows arranged end to end.

Via Conner:

Crow flight patterns are echoed at a thirtieth of a second to create a loopable waveform that corresponds to a tone. The waveform was measured at 27 crows across one tenth of a second. The animation plays at 12fps (2.25 seconds per 27 birds) and is 22.5 times slower than the rate of the comparable frequency. The median crow waveform was “tuned” to D4 and from there, the other crow waveforms were measured. Different wave shapes (sine, saw) were loosely based on flight pattern shape, which was a result of the speed of the crow and the angle and proximity of the crow to the camera.

Conner says his work was inspired by Dennis Hlynsky covered here previously (a sample below):

https://vimeo.com/78188069

Crows in D (Vimeo / Conner Griffith)