Cymatics

Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration presents Hans Jenny's investigation of what happens to matter when it is made to vibrate. Jenny coined the term cymatics, from the Greek word for wave, for the study of the forms that sound and vibration produce. The book documents experiments conducted over some fourteen years, in which powders, pastes and liquids placed on plates and membranes were excited by audible sound and the resulting patterns photographed. What the images show is that each frequency produces its own ordered pattern, that the pattern changes as the frequency changes, and that the forms which appear are not random but regular, symmetrical and often strikingly lifelike, resembling shapes found in nature, in art and in architecture. Jenny's argument, carried mainly by the photographs themselves rather than by mathematical treatment, is that periodic vibration is a formative principle running through the physical world, and that the same ordering appears wherever it acts. Later editions gather the two original volumes together with commentaries by researchers, artists and scientists describing the influence the work has had across a range of disciplines in the arts and the sciences.

Written from the public record for the book.

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