How This Guy Makes Mesmerizing Fluid Sculptures | Obsessed | WIRED

I just remember it was so captivating really kind of alien like this strange-looking material is not computer-generated what you're seeing is a liquid with nano sized particles of iron in it reacting to a magnetic field it's called ferrofluid it was first developed by NASA an artist Eric misplay has been using it in his work for the past 12 years every single sculpture I feel like I tackle with very fluid I have no idea how I'm gonna get this to work when I go in Eric is a master metal worker and builder he built this giant top and a literal metal jacket my father when I was 11 years old he got me an anvil and I started blacksmithing when I was younger I would make all sorts of stuff from gates ornamental spoons and swords but ever since coming across ferrofluids in a scientific article as a graduate student he's been captivated by it the more I read about it and the characteristics of it I just the whole time was thinking man I really want to do something with this stuff and when you were a kid you could see the magnetic field in a 2d iron filings on a piece of paper you could see that striations of it but now you're actually seeing with all these notes coming off of it what the magnetic field looks like in a three dimensional realm nasa-developed ferrofluids in the early 1960s engineer Steve papel was trying to figure out how to draw rocket fuel into the engine in zero gravity his solution he would magnetize it now the magnetic fuel was never actually adopted for spaceflight but ferrofluids are used in a number of different commercial applications and even to create an airtight seal around your computer's hard drive it's been used for many different things but what I use it for is none of those things I use it to show off how beautiful it looks what you're seeing is Eric increasing the power to the electromagnet until eventually the fluid jumps and it forms into those little cones because that's the magnetic field but also you know that's least resistance to when something gets skinnier and skinnier and then it you know goes right up towards the magnet itself the very first time I got fair fluid I had it shipped from a company called Ferro tech and they're the ones that make ferrofluid I noticed instantly that it was totally totally messy I mean it's like black ink so you know I had ink all over myself but I would were just natural magnets and and you know move it around and just stare at it and go wow this is crazy but even the characteristics of me playing with it with the magnet it was different than what I thought it wasn't quite moving how I wanted it to move or I envisioned it moving but it was nonetheless still intriguing and beautiful to me I decided to do my first project which was the Machine effect in effect I made a very large sphere there was a huge natural magnet inside the sphere teaching himself how to code Erik program the movement of the magnet so it would seemingly become attracted to a viewer who approached the sphere I think there's something really important about connecting people with a piece of work not only just visually but what you're doing is affecting it for his next project Erik built a wall of ferrofluid that would mirror the shape of the viewer standing in front of it I was originally thinking of you know that pin toy where you would like push her hand in and all the pins would come out and make a shape of your hand I really wanted to do a version of that that was with just this fluid and as you would walk in front it would make a very you know 8-bit kind of representation of you in real time I made 320 electromagnets and I placed it behind this wall and I had a pump that would recirculate the fluid up to the top and run over the surface of it I had to build all of the computer chips computer components right the program I built every single magnet you know every single problem I ran into I kind of had to figure out how to solve it Eric quickly ran into issues with the pumps that circulated the ferrofluid these cheap pumps that you buy habit of a magnet they kind of spin around and that's what turns it all this fluid it's just dragging around on the pump system so it was adding tons of resistance in every half hour two hours I was blowing them out I finally decided I'm just gonna tip the whole thing over and make it into a pool and so that was my third piece that one's called Fair flexion pool I was in a class and it was an interactive musical class and there was a professor there who specialized in what's called max/msp and it's a way of programming for a lot of stuff in the music industry and lighting and things timed an image is captured from an old xbox the computer program tells this microcontroller right here in the center and then this microcontroller tells these driver boards which magnets to turn on or off and it just makes a real pixelated simple representation of what it's picking up through the camera the whole time in the class everyone else is working on their music projects I am trying to build a program for the sculpture I want tons of wires tons of connections tons of problems left and right and eventually it got working as Eric built on his experience with ferrofluids he had to learn more and more about magnetism and how to build his own electromagnets in science class your professor would take a nail and then he would wrap the nail with copper wire and then it connected to a battery and then you could pick up you know little paperclips or whatever that's what I was going for using the same concept Eric built larger and more powerful electromagnets to make the fluid jump further well when I first turned it on we weren't sure if it was working so I kind of waved a crescent wrench over it and and it immediately just sucked it out of my hand and stuck right to the magnet as he built stronger magnets he faced new challenges he is a huge factor with magnets so if a magnet gets too hot it gets saturated and meaning the magnetic field isn't really that optimal for how much current you're really putting into it Eric developed a coolant system for these larger more powerful magnets so this is the next electromagnet this is the bottom part of the coolant system so this place is in here and another version of this coolant system goes down here on the steel so it's being cooled from both sides as well as through the center in his 2016 peace killing time eric says he built his strongest electromagnet yet I'm guessing that that magnet attached properly could probably pick up like a thousand pounds maybe his small car [Music] my father you know he was very much of a builder as well as being an artist so I was helping out my father like physically built stuff when I was a very young kid he introduced me to the foundries Loveland Colorado have some of the biggest founders in the nation surprisingly but started with mold making and wax chasing and then I'm moved up to pouring molten metal and to welding and then eventually lead welder most of the other lead welders were you know in their young 40s I just enjoyed creating I thought it was really awesome to just build things with my hand and watch something unfold and be complete my dad's done tons of huge drawings I still remember one drawing he had done this thing was massive him as you know like 9 feet by 14 feet and just the way he would draw I was really blown away with if you do like a section over here and then he'd do a section over here and then a section over here and then the whole thing would like completely come together absolutely perfect and he didn't really outline the the piece as a whole if just the whole thing would just fit together all of a sudden I was around this all the time I was around you know this sense of wonderment because my dad was doing things that no one else was doing I think overall the goal has been to you know create a sense of art that kind of reefs to meu lates people about art a lot of sculptures I try to make I try to show like the what ifs or how is this possible to even do something like this those are the fun questions for me to try to showcase in this type of work the unforeseen thing that's what most people don't realize is I have failed so many times trying to figure this stuff out but as time goes on I figure more and more and more out and I don't know if a lot of people stick with something that is that frustrating for a long time my current project I'm using light and and and trying to bend the light with the magnet what's happening is is as the magnet is spinning the microscopic particles of the iron they're actually moving in the plane of glass so when you see the light look like it's moving it's actually the way the iron particles are moving and the light is refracting off of them adding the light on this new system is it as a whole new starting point of frustrations for me frustrations are just part of working with is mesmerizing material [Music] it's so hard to even master anything in life with this fluid I feel like it's this is just the beginning and now I've been into it for 10 to 12 years now so there's a lot left [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,167,032

Rating: 4.9277515 out of 5

Keywords: ott obsessed, magnetic fluid, ferrofluid, ferro fluids, ferrofluids, fluids, magnetic, ferrofluid eric mesple, eric mesple art, eric mesple, art eric mesple, ferrofluid art, art ferrofluid, ferrofluid sculpture, how does ferrofluid work, ferrofluid wired, ferrofluid obsessed, obsessed, wired obsessed, liquid magnetic, spiky fluid, ferrofluid spikes, ferrofluid design, ferro, obsessed wired, obsessed ferrofluid, obsessed magnetic fluid, magnetic fluid wired, real venom, wired

Id: n8Zvyr2Bc5Y

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020