Ripples at Rest: Fredrik Skåtar’s Vibration Mirror

Fredrik Skåtar is a Swedish architect, artist and researcher exploring and manipulating natural forms. He created his “Vibration mirror” in 2010, a polished aluminum sculpture that expanded on a previous work “Wave table.” “Wave table” was made of acrylic glass so you could see ‘through’ the water instead of your own reflection.

The ripples in the ‘water’ of “Vibration Mirror” reveal a distorted view of what’s before the piece, bringing the viewer into direct interaction with the work. Two half-circles radiate out, as if two people standing in front of the work each created their own stir in the flat mirror. The mirror’s flat top contrasts its busy bottom, where the two sets of scattered wrinkles intersect to create a loose grid of waves.

Fredrik writes, “Shapes of water are constantly generated all around us, too fast for the human eye to perceive. The Vibration mirror is a sculpture where time has been stopped to materialize the complex geometry of intersecting water ripples.

The Vibration mirror is a part of the projects ‘From animation to sculpture’ and ‘Matter of sound’ that was funded by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden) and The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 2010 and 2012.”