You can model one by hand for a still
but when you want to animate things get complicated.
quite many programs have a surface math tool where based
on an equation it can generate a surface
After Effects has such a tool called
sinedots
Should you know the equation of a surface, it would be relatively easy to display it. It would be much harder to get the equation of a general surface if you like to - say - reproduce it. For two years now, Im trying to find the equation of woman’s leg, arm, body… and the direct approach did give acceptable results so far 
I’m not that good at maths so I wouldn’t know where to start with it but would the Add Function Surface addon do what you want. Under Add Mesh 3D Function Surfaces.
Bill
yuk math - argh …
but it looks possible
I have to play with it a little bit
Perhaps you can start from here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Add_Mesh/Add_3d_Function_Surface
Ciao
VB
Yeah I was thinking the 3d function surface add-on.
it looks like a good add-on for motion graphics… coool!
i think it could also work with an animated cloud displacement and/or a spline ik with 4 hooks and first, third and second, fourth animated with sin f-curve modifier and shifted by 1/2 phase.
or a lot easier: with a wave modifier
Claas,
Try this on openprocessing forum http://www.openprocessing.org/ , you may get some result,
at least the function for generating this one
it is a java based scripting, if useful you can port it to python
also check this one http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=2922 ( this may not be what you want, anyways have a look 
)
I played with the 3D function system but frankly with my lack of understanding what to do with the math to get a certain result I feel like a monkey in a space station.
Nightshades post is pretty spot on since the result there is smooth but irregular as well.
I am curious about how hard it would be to transfer the code into python to build the mesh.
Can that what builds the wire there be somewhat squeezed into the 3d surface generator?
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=6747
If you look closely you will see that this is nothing else then drawing a line again and again
just deforming it step by step in blender this would result into a long rectangular mesh which is
curve deformed.
I thing that you can reproduce these effect with simple tools.
Animating a mesh like a flack with wind turbulence and a degrading texture to transparent on it.
wind turbulence mh I have to try that,
that mainly Should work fine work linear on directional wave
that silk app however is going into all directions
patterns.http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=6747
I experimented with displacement maps a lot but the main problem is that it
is based on the normal direction of the base mesh.
I have to see if maybe I can figure out a way to get this working with the 3d surface
function - it seems to be the most logical tool.
Thiago Costa did some work on this… shame that he uses xsi, wonder if we can bring him to the dark side:
taken from http://thiagocosta.net/
x*z
x^2 + z^2
x^2 - z^2
x^2 * z^2
x^3 + z^3
sin(x)
cos(x) + cos(z) ^ 2
cos(x^2 + z^2)
sin(x^2 + z^2)
-1 / (x^2 + z^2)
|cos(x) + cos(z)| ^ (1/2)
cos(x) + cos(z)
| cos(x^2+z^2) | ^ (1/2)
|cos(x+z)| ^ (10/2)
cos( |x| + |z| ) * ( x + z )
cos( |x| + |z|) * (|x| + |z| )
cos( |x| + |z| )
|sin(x) * ( sin(x) + cos(z) )| ^ 0.2
sin(x^2) * cos(z^2)
if you check out his smoke sim at one point
it looks very similar to posted image.