By Peter Pettersson, translation Yarrow Cleaves
see also Sound Creates Form
see also The Sound of Matter (Video
Is there a connection between sound, vibrations and physical reality? Do sound and vibrations have the potential to create? In this article we will see what various researchers in this field, which has been given the name of Cymatics, have concluded.
In 1787, the jurist, musician and physicist Ernst Chladni published Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klangesor Discoveries Concerning the Theory of Music.In this and other pioneering works, Chladni, who was born in 1756, the same year as Mozart, and died in 1829, the same year as Beethoven, laid the foundations for that discipline within physics that came to be called acoustics, the science of sound. Among Chladni´s successes was finding a way to make visible what sound waves generate. With the help of a violin bow which he drew perpendicularly across the edge of flat plates covered with sand, he produced those patterns and shapes which today go by the term Chladni figures. (se left) What was the significance of this discovery? Chladni demonstrated once and for all that sound actually does affect physical matter and that it has the quality of creating geometric patterns.
Chladni figures.
What
we are seeing in this illustration is primarily two things:
areas that are and are not vibrating. When a flat plate of an
elastic material is vibrated, the plate oscillates not only
as a whole but also as parts. The boundaries between these
vibrating parts, which are specific for every particular
case, are called node lines and do not vibrate. The other
parts are oscillating constantly. If sand is then put on this
vibrating plate, the sand (black in the illustration)
collects on the non-vibrating node lines. The oscillating
parts or areas thus become empty. According to Jenny, the
converse is true for liquids; that is to say, water lies on
the vibrating parts and not on the node
lines.
Lissajous
Figures
In
1815 the American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch began
studying the patterns created by the intersection of two sine
curves whose axes are perpendicular to each other, sometimes
called Bowditch curves but more often Lissajous figures. (se
below right) This after the French mathematician
Jules-Antoine Lissajous, who, independently of Bowditch,
investigated them in 1857-58. Both concluded that the
condition for these designs to arise was that the
frequencies, or oscillations per second, of both curves stood
in simple whole-number ratios to each other, such as 1:1,
1:2, 1:3, and so on. In fact, one can produce Lissajous
figures even if the frequencies are not in perfect
whole-number ratios to each other. If the difference is
insignificant, the phenomenon that arises is that the designs
keep changing their appearance. They move. What creates the
variations in the shapes of these designs is the phase
differential, or the angle between the two curves. In other
words, the way in which their rhythms or periods coincide.
If, on the other hand, the curves have different frequencies
and are out of phase with each other, intricate web-like
designs arise. These Lissajous figures are all visual
examples of waves that meet each other at right angles.
Lissajous
figures.
The
result of two sine curves meeting at right angles.
Illustration: Typoform, Jenny W. Bryant, Swedish National
Encyclopedia
As I pondered the connection between these figures and other
areas of knowledge, I came to think about the concept that
exists in many societies and their mythologies around the
world, which describes the world as a web. For example, many
of the Mesoamerican people regarded the various parts of the
universe as products of spinning and weaving: "Conception and
birth were/.../ compared with the acts of spinning and
weaving; all the Aztec and Mayan creation and fertility
goddesses were described as great weavers."(1) A number of
waves crossing each other at right angles look like a woven
pattern, and it is precisely that they meet at 90-degree
angles that gives rise to Lissajous figures.
Video
Examples of Cymatics in Action:
Hans Jenny
In 1967, the late Hans Jenny, a Swiss doctor, artist, and researcher, published the bilingual book Kymatik -Wellen und Schwingungen mit ihrer Struktur und Dynamik/ Cymatics - The Structure and Dynamics of Waves and Vibrations. In this book Jenny, like Chladni two hundred years earlier, showed what happens when one takes various materials like sand, spores, iron filings, water, and viscous substances, and places them on vibrating metal plates and membranes. What then appears are shapes and motion- patterns which vary from the nearly perfectly ordered and stationary to those that are turbulently developing, organic, and constantly in motion.
Jenny
made use of crystal oscillators and an invention of his
own by the name of the tonoscope to set these plates and
membranes vibrating. This was a major step forward. The
advantage with crystal oscillators is that one can
determine exactly which frequency and amplitude/volume
one wants. It was now possible to research and follow a
continuous train of events in which one had the
possibility of changing the frequency or the amplitude
or both.
The tonoscope was constructed to make the human voice visible without any electronic apparatus as an intermediate link. This yielded the amazing possibility of being able to see the physical image of the vowel, tone or song a human being produced directly. (se below) Not only could you hear a melody - you could see it, too!
Jenny called this new area of research cymatics, which comes from the Greek kyma, wave. Cymatics could be translated as: the study of how vibrations, in the broad sense, generate and influence patterns, shapes and moving processes.
The Creative Vibration
What did Hans Jenny find in his investigations?
In the first place, Jenny produced both the Chladni figures and Lissajous figures in his experiments. He discovered also that if he vibrated a plate at a specific frequency and amplitude - vibration - the shapes and motion patterns characteristic of that vibration appeared in the material on the plate. If he changed the frequency or amplitude, the development and pattern were changed as well. He found that if he increased the frequency, the complexity of the patterns increased, the number of elements became greater. If on the other hand he increased the amplitude, the motions became all the more rapid and turbulent and could even create small eruptions, where the actual material was thrown up in the air.
The development of a pattern in sand (step by step).
Swinging water drops (by Hans Jenny)
Sand
patterns as a function of the size of the plate
The shapes, figures and patterns of motion that appeared
proved to be primarily a function of frequency, amplitude,
and the inherent characteristics of the various materials. He
also discovered that under certain conditions he could make
the shapes change continuously, despite his having altered
neither frequency nor amplitude!
The
vowel A in sand
When Jenny experimented with fluids of various kinds he
produced wave motions, spirals, and wave-like patterns in
continuous circulation. In his research with plant spores, he
found an enormous variety and complexity, but even so, there
was a unity in the shapes and dynamic developments that
arose. With the help of iron filings, mercury, viscous
liquids, plastic-like substances and gases, he investigated
the three-dimensional aspects of the effect of vibration.
In his research with the tonoscope, Jenny noticed that when
the vowels of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Sanskrit
were pronounced, the sand took the shape of the written
symbols for these vowels, while our modern languages, on the
other hand, did not generate the same result! How is this
possible? Did the ancient Hebrews and Indians know this? Is
there something to the concept of "sacred language," which
both of these are sometimes called? What qualities do these
"sacred languages," among which Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese
are often numbered, possess? Do they have the power to
influence and transform physical reality, to create things
through their inherent power, or, to take a concrete example,
through the recitation or singing of sacred texts, to heal a
person who has gone "out of tune"?
Sound
structures in the water drop as a function of the
wavelength and a function of the
extent
An interesting phenomenon appeared when he took a vibrating
plate covered with liquid and tilted it.The liquid did not
yield to gravitational influence and run off the vibrating
plate but stayed on and went on constructing new shapes as
though nothing had happened. If, however, the oscillation was
then turned off, the liquid began to run, but if he was
really fast and got the vibrations going again, he could get
the liquid back in place on the plate. According to Jenny,
this was an example of an antigravitational effect created by
vibrations.
Universality?
In
the beginning of Cymatics,Hans Jenny says the following: "In
the living as well as non-living parts of nature, the trained
eye encounters wide-spread evidence of periodic systems.
These systems points to a continuous transformation from the
one set condition to the opposite set."(3) Jenny is saying
that we see everywhere examples of vibrations, oscillations,
pulses, wave motions, pendulum motions, rhythmic courses of
events, serial sequences, and their effects and actions.
Throughout the book Jenny emphasises his conception that
these phenomena and processes not be taken merely as subjects
for mental analysis and theorizing. Only by trying to "enter
into"phenomena through empirical and systematic investigation
can we create mental structures capably of casting light on
ultimate reality. He asks that we not "mix ourselves in with
the phenomenon"but rather pay attention to it and allow it to
lead us to the inherent and essential. He means that even the
purest philosophical theory is nevertheless incapable of
grasping the true existence and reality of it in full
measure.
What
Hans Jenny pointed out is the resemblance between the
shapes and patterns we see around us in physical reality
and the shapes and patterns he generated in his
investgations. Jenny was convinced that biological
evolution was a result of vibrations, and that their
nature determined the ultimate outcome. He speculated
that every cell had its own frequency and that a number
of cells with the same frequency created a new frequency
which was in harmony with the original, which in its
turn possibly formed an organ that also created a new
frequency in harmony with the two preceding ones. Jenny
was saying that the key to understanding how we can heal
the body with the help of tones lies in our
understanding of how different frequencies influence
genes, cells and various structures in the body. He also
suggested that through the study of the human ear and
larynx we would be able to come to a deeper
understanding of the ultimate cause of vibrations.
Trinity
In
the closing chapter of the book Cymatics, Jenny sums up these
phenomena in a three-part unity. The fundamental and
generative power is in the vibration which, with its
periodicity, sustains phenomena with its two poles. At one
pole we have form, the figurative pattern. At the other is
motion, the dynamic process.
These
three fields - vibration and periodicity as the ground
field, and form and motion as the two poles - constitute
an indivisible whole, Jenny says, even though one can
dominate sometimes. Does this trinity have something
within science that corresponds? Yes, according to John
Beaulieu, American polarity and music therapist. In his
book Music and Sound in the Healing Arts,he draws a
comparison between his own three-part structure, which
in many respects resembles Jenny's, and the conclusions
researchers working with subatomic particles have
reached. "There is a similarity between cymatic pictures
and quantum particles. In both cases that which appeares
to be a solid form is also a wave. They are both created
and simultaneously organized by the principle of pulse
(Read:principle of vibration).
This is the great mystery with sound: there is no solidity! A
form that appears solid is actually created by a underlying
vibration."(4) In an attempt to explain the unity in this
dualism between wave and form, physics developed the quantum
field theory, in which the quantum field, or in our
terminology, the vibration, is understood as the one true
reality, and the particle or form, and the wave or motion,
are only two polar manifestations of the one reality,
vibration, says Beaulieu.
In conclusion, I would like to cite Cathie E. Guzetta´s
poetic contemplation of where the investigation of the
relationship between sound and the arising of various life
forms might lead us in the future: "The forms of snowflakes
and faces of flowers may take on their shape because they are
responding to some sound in nature. Likewise, it is possible
that crystals, plants, and human beings may be, in some way,
music that has taken on visible form."(5)
Sources:
- Klein, Cecilia F.: "Woven Heaven, Tangled Earth: A Weaver´s Paradigm of the Mesoamerican Cosmos", in Ethnoastronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the American Tropics, Ed. by Anthony P. Aveni and Gary Urton, Annals of the Academy of Science, Vol. 385, New York, 1982, p. 15
- McClellan, Randall: The Healing Forces of Music: History, Theory and Practice, Element, Inc., 1991, p. 50
- Jenny, Hans: Kymatik: Wellen und Schwingungen mit ihrer Struktur und Dynamik/Cymatics: The Structure and Dynamics of Waves and Vibrations, Basilius Press, 1967, p. 10
- Beaulieu, John: Music and Sound in the Healing Arts, Station Hill Press, 1987, p. 40
- Guzzetta, Cathie E.: Music Therapy: Nursing the Music of the Soul, in Music: Physician for the Times to Come, Campbell, Don (Editor), Quest Books, 1991, p. 149
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