The study of wave phenomena.
Guess what!
"All is number!"
(Pythagoras)
In the early Sixties, a Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny experimented with the effects of sound vibrations on fluids, powders and liquid paste. Photographs of Jenny's work were as remarkable as his observations of the patterns which emerged. He wrote of "powder erupting into clouds and crypts like honeycombs, pillar like prominences, column waves and wave forms, current storms and storm currents". He concluded, "However, this is not an unregulated chaos; it is a dynamic but ordered pattern."
Dr. Hans Jenny (1904-1972). Swiss physician, artist, and natural scientist.
Dr. Jenny's cymatic images are truly awe-inspiring, not only for their visual beauty in portraying the inherent responsiveness of matter to sound (vibration) but because they elicit a deep recognition that we, too, are part and parcel of this same complex and intricate vibrational matrix. Perhaps Dr. Jenny's greatest gift has been to provide a concrete methodology to illustrate such principles as inspired the ancient Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Plato, and the great Copernican cosmologists Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler.
"The more one studies these things, the more one realizes that sound is the creative principle. It must be regarded as primordial. No single phenomenal category can be claimed as the aboriginal principle. We cannot say, in the beginning was number, or in the beginning was symmetry, etc. These are categorical properties which are implicit in what brings forth and what is brought forth. By using them in description we approach the heart of the matter. They are not themselves the creative power. This power is inherent in tone, in sound."
Quote from Hans Jenny's book "Cymatics, compilation of Volume 1 and 2" ; Publisher: Basilius Presse Basel
Nicole La Voie's Sound Energy site.
We will be conducting our own experiments into Cymatics at the Podule over the next year or so. We are currently gathering information on building a "Tonoscope" and a vibrating plate rig, hooked into a loudspeaker. One of the areas we'd like to explore is putting actual music into the rig and then filming the results. Jenny did a small amount of this. On the videos there are examples of Mozart and Bach effecting water. See below.
"Like the human voice, music can also be made visible by means of the tonoscope. For this purpose an electroacoustic version of the tonoscope is used. Liquid was used as a reagent in the pictures shown here. The vibrational figures appear indirectly in the layer of fluid. They are entirely characteristic of the music played. However, the eye is unaccustomed to seeing music and is at first lost without the guidance of the ear. But with the ear to prompt it, the eye experiences these tonal events in full visual detail."
Quote from Hans Jenny's book "Cymatics, compilation
of Volume 1 and 2," ; Publisher: Basilius Presse Basel
Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor,
1st movement, bar 30, before start of andante. |
Mozart, Jupiter Symphony, 1st movement, bar
173, beat 3. |
