MysTech Newsletter, June 2023

What are the fundamental principles from which the diverse forms of life emerge and how can they be approached step by step in the phenomenon and experienced artistically?  Dealing with these questions led in the fall of 2015 to the founding of the “School for Kymatics”, a free association of scientists and artists. This was preceded in the fall of 2014 by the 1st World Cymatics Congress in Allerheiligen (Black Forest), where about 170 experts and interested people from 16 nations met to exchange ideas, practice and experiment together artistically. The desire to continue the joint work that arose there, provided the impulse to found the School for Cymatics.  Our concern is to make the fundamentally new approach of cymatics accessible to all interested people in the manifold fields of scientific and artistic life.  Through courses, seminars, lectures, and trainings it should be possible for the participants to get to know the new scientific method and to work with it independently.  For this reason, in this article we would like to look at the gradual emergence of cymatics and its pioneers, especially Hans Jenny, and initially point to the methodology that has recently emerged from it.

“The art of painting with tones….”  These are the words of the poet, Christoph M. Wieland, that were chosen by Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756 – 1827) to be the opening words of his book, Theory of Sound, published in 1787.  In that book, he explained for the first time what had been unknown as a phenomenon until then.  On a glass plate sprinkled with sand, well-ordered harmonic shapes formed when the plate was set in vibration by means of a violin bow.  The resulting shapes are widely known today under the term “Chladni sound figures”.

With this experiment, Chladni achieved great renown among the higher social classes of the time, so that he was even able to demonstrate his discovery to Napoleon.  Napoleon immediately announced a competition to clarify the phenomenon, which was won by the young mathematician Marie-Sophie Germain (1776 – 1831).  She showed in a mathematical derivation that oscillation patterns with areas of high activity (oscillation bellies) and areas of complete rest (oscillation nodes) occur on the plate.  The sand accumulates at the vibration node lines, while the areas of the vibration bellies remain free.  This is in no way a static process that takes place once, rather, the sand is in constant motion as the vibration form is created in the movement.

About thirty years after Chladni’s presentation, the famous physicist Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) observed that the order of fine, lightweight, particles does not, however, depend on the motion of the plate, but rather on the motion of the air above the plate.  Thus, light particles float well-ordered above the plate at the vibrational bellies, i.e., at the places of highest activity, and coarser particles arrange themselves as described before, following gravity, at the vibrational nodes. For a long time, it was thought that the phenomenon had been grasped in its entirety and could be described comprehensively in mathematical terms.  It turned out, however, that even in a vacuum, where no air movement can occur above the plate, the sand will, nevertheless, come into a limited form formation.  Those forces, which have a share in this form formation, still cannot be named by physics.  Even this simple experiment shows how essential the study of cymatics and its phenomena is, for a gradual approach to reality.  There is, of course, an abundance of other phenomena which, when observed carefully, confront us with questions which cannot be solved by the hitherto established, materialistic habits of thought.

In 1904, the English singer Margaret Watts Hughes published a book entitled The Eidophone – Voice Figures (Geometrical and Natural Forms Produced by Vibrations of the Human Voice).^[1]  In this book she introduces the Eidophone, which she developed as early as 1885 and with which she produced numerous sound figures.  The Eidophone is a jug-like instrument that is covered with a membrane and into which one sings from the side via a tube.  Similar to Chladni, she sprinkled sand and various powders onto the membrane, but also applied paste-like substances (e.g. glycerine, mixed with paint).  The excitation of the membrane was now no longer done mechanically with the violin bow, as with Chladni’s plates, but by the air column, which is set into highly differentiated movements by the human voice when singing. On the membrane, in addition to forms that correspond to Chladni’s sound figures, highly complex shapes emerge, many of which resemble forms from nature. Margaret Watts Hughes developed a method by which she could capture these images.  She moved a glass disk over the membrane while singing into the Eidophone; in the process, the sound shapes of the paste-like liquids transferred to the glass disk, where they were subsequently dried.  Margaret Watts Hughes used these glass discs to decorate the windows in the “Home for Little Boys” orphanage she founded in London.^[2]  She acquired such mastery with this instrument that she could form flowers and leaves, even tree-like structures purely from the human voice.  Here the question arises, what other forces are at work through the human voice that such complex structures, known from the shaping of nature, can form. We want to pursue this question in the following.

Although Margaret Watts Hughes presented her discoveries to the Royal Society, and also presented them in a scientific publication, her method fell into oblivion only a few years after her death.  It was not until a good 100 years later that the principle of the Eidophone was taken up by Hans Jenny and patented as the Tonoscope, probably without knowing the work of Margaret Watts Hughes.  He encouraged the use of the Tonoscope, especially in schools for deaf children to give them a perceptive access to their own voice.

The great pioneer of Cymatics, who also coined the name Cymatic, derived from the Greek word kyma-wave, is thus the physician and painter Hans Jenny (1904 – 1972) from Dornach (Switzerland).  He is the first who systematically turned to the mentioned phenomena, investigated them in numerous experiments, ordered them and penetrated them intellectually; the abundance of the phenomena investigated is to be particularly emphasized.  Before we turn to some of them, we want to take a short look at his life.

Hans Jenny had already observed nature intensively in his childhood, with a particular fondness for birds.  On one of his regular ornithological excursions, he discovered the first Goetheanum under construction.  Fascinated by the architecture, he wanted to learn more about it and, at the age of 15, he bought the books Theosophy and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment by Rudolf Steiner.  With his parents he took part in a guided tour at the first Goetheanum, led by Rudolf Steiner.  In Rudolf Steiner, he had found a personality to whom he remained inwardly faithful all his life, as his wife Maria Jenny reports.^[3]  The love of nature and intense observation are basic motifs of his life.  “His power of observation was quite enormous,” his widow said in an interview.^[4]  One gets an idea of this gift when one looks at his “animal landscapes”^[5].  In these pictures, one can experience how Hans Jenny succeeds in capturing the animal in its wholeness, within itself and with its environment.  Jenny carried the motifs of the pictures inside for a long time, sometimes for years, before he painted them in a relatively short time with the highest concentration.  Again and again, he observed intensively and noted his observations in his diary.  In his mid-40s, for example, he wrote on March 18, 1948: “Today at the zoo looked at the peacock. Each peacock eye is the whole color peacock. This purely colored dabbed on: is a peacock’s eye; the whole color peacock is repeated in the feather. The peacock, viewed purely in color, stands before one in so many ways. The peacock eyes arise only gradually.  In the feathers of the birds the metamorphic being is flowing in colors and color forms, in drawings and so on.  It flows; thus, it is completely evident in the change. The peacock’s head is itself again the whole peacock, subsumed and concentrated. Drawn together it merges, but it is implied. The neck of a dazzling blue, golden-green shields come over the back. In these central a ray blue surrounded by copper; gradually unfolded eyes. The widest are the most complete. Deep violet blue, magnificent bright blue, copper, golden green: it is the whole color peacock in a color mirror, as a pure color image. What colored the whole peacock is effective on each feather, but only painting, only as a color image. This painting, reflecting, shining, shining off, wonderfully inking (color ink of spiritual kind) is the origin of the animal colors. It can be traced exactly how feathers of the same color appear on the peacock, dressing neck, back, chest as the same, and how they become dissimilar: i.e., uniting the elements of the total peacock in themselves. On the neck they are all blue, on the head all deep blue, on the back all golden-green shields, they are of the same kind and on the whole of the same uniform coloration. They have only one coloration. Then come the feathers, which are not only unicolored, but multicolored; that is, the totality of the colored also appears after them: they contain all colors. In the individual zones all nuances, intermediate and transitional forms. Whole feathers corresponding to the whole animal, a ray to the single peacock eye. The wheel-beating peacock therefore presents the following. It is to be seen as a whole being, spherically encompassing in itself many individual beings, all of which are images of the whole. A color sphere with large color zones and in it many individual spheres with color zones, which are all in smallness images of the whole. A cosmic principle.”^[6]

Here we can experience how intensively Hans Jenny could immerse himself in observation, “disappear completely,” as his wife called it^[7], thus withdrawing himself in such a way that the phenomenon can express itself in its entirety.  Out of the concrete, the materialized, he sought the whole, the idea that forms the individual.  His paintings themselves are acts of research, pursuing the question of how the animal being is modified according to the forces and tendencies of its environment, but also how the animal affects and helps to shape its environment.  “The concordances between animal and environment, as they have been continually worked out in Jenny’s work, are real, harmonious experiences which can only spring from relations of voice and tension.  The animal is inseparable from its environment; it has arisen from it, as it has arisen from it.  Nevertheless, it becomes a dungeon for him, which closes every further horizon, and thus makes every further development impossible.  Such tensions permeate his [Jenny’s] animal paintings. He painted the magnificent togetherness of animal and environment without concealing the sacrifice and suffering of the animal soul. His animals want to become more than they are.  However, it is not the individual animal that can want this, but only the animal group soul inseparable with its species.  Since Jenny’s animal paintings more or less presuppose a real encounter with this, he can never fall prey to the temptation of portraying an individual animal.  This figure, which does not fully enter into sensuality, is probably the real model for Jenny, which approached him at different times.”^[8]

Jenny thus follows Goethe’s path of research, who also sought the unifying whole in the multiplicity of concrete appearance.  In addition to the artistic examination, Hans Jenny summarizes his animal observations in a thought-provoking way in his extensive work “Der Typus” (The Type).^[9]

How consciously Jenny follows the path of the scientist and shapes it by his deeds is shown by the following diary entry of January 5, 1945; it precedes, so to speak, his public work as a scientist.  “All science, indeed all our thinking, is in riddles, consists of riddles; our knowledge is only a repetition and ordering of riddles.  But nowhere does the essence of things name itself. […] We use X-rays; we do not know their essence.  We x-ray the lungs; we do not know their essence.  We observe shadows, which we relate to disease processes.  We do not know the essence of tuberculosis. […] We do not know the light, the sun.  We have defined and ordered everything in a scientific, rational way, but we do not know its essence.  We keep on rolling the problem of the essence, we keep on assuming new primordial elements, building blocks, elementary parts, etc., and we keep on losing more and more what we actually wanted to explain out of sight, out of experience, [so] that at the bottom of this whole civilization tangle there is complete fog, absolute darkness: that comes out for it again as a total appearance: in the complete bankruptcy, in the complete bankruptcy of the civilization.  It leads from one work of destruction to another, it is incapable of solving even one social problem, it makes one scientific fiasco after another.  Finally, no science knows what it is dealing with. […] Now up!  These riddles must be solved!  Otherwise, humanity is no longer possible, only the decline. […] The riddle, the mystery attracts us, it draws amazement, admiration, devotion, awe, love from us.  Not limits of knowledge per se, but limits of understanding we experience in the ignorabimus, but the understanding is only one of our tools, not the tool, but only an auxiliary tool.  Thus, humanity is at the beginning of new ways, new means, new research, at the beginning of cognition, at the beginning of a spirit cognition.  Our whole being must participate in cognition […] We must penetrate things, sink into them, and draw out of the world what lives in it: it speaks, not we; it is it, not we, which then expresses itself.  Clean your tools, strengthen them, purify them, and the world will sanctify them by revelation.”^[10]

Early on, Hans Jenny focused his attention on the phenomenon of repetition.  We encounter this principle in all areas of animate and inanimate nature.  If we think of a tree, not only the leaves are thousandfold repetitions of the same structure, but also every branch fork, every shoot, but also every annual ring, yes, every wood fiber, the blossoms, every petal, up to the individual cells are constant repetitions of a specific principle.  The repetitive formation appears to us particularly clearly in the articulated, segmental design of the vertebrates, the arthropods, and the higher worms; it is the predominant pictorial principle of these animal phyla.  The formation of these animal organisms takes place in the development or genesis of the form of the primordial vertebrae or segments.  The same formation is repeated in the head-tail direction, and, despite all modification in later development, the periodic construction remains a dominant organizing principle in these organisms. The whole formation of the shape of these animals, but also their movement – just think of the gait of a millipede – has a predominant rhythmic element.

We do not want to go further into the manifold expressions of the periodic here, be it in the structure of the body, e.g., in the arrangement of the cells, the course of the fibers in the muscle, etc., or even in the manifold rhythmic processes.  Also, in the inanimate nature and the physical phenomena, finally, periodic processes always appear to us in every sub-area.

Hans Jenny turned to these periodic processes from 1958 and began to set up experiments to approach these phenomena systematically.  He starts with Chladni’s oscillating plates, but uses the technical possibilities of his time.  For the vibration excitation he no longer uses a violin bow, but electromechanical components, as they are also installed in a loudspeaker.  This enables him to freely determine the excitation frequency, i.e., the number of vibrations per second, and to couple the sound for any length of time.  Now the processes can be studied in detail; as the sound passes through different frequencies, manifold forms are formed, with sections of apparent chaos in between.  The forms follow the basic structure, that the higher the tone is, the more finely the patterns form, also the volume, the amplitude has an influence on the form and the movement of the sand grains.

If we study the movements closely, we recognize how small vortices, or various accumulations form, which however, continuously exchange material among themselves.  Everything is in constant motion, carried by the rhythmic movement of the plate and yet creates clear forms, shapes, in this movement.  This trinity of shape, movement and rhythm will be encountered more often, but let us stay for a moment with the phenomena that are revealed in various experiments.

We spoke at the beginning about Michael Faraday, who pointed out the different behavior of coarse and fine, or heavy and light, particles in connection with the Chladni plates.  If we do not sprinkle sand, but lycopodium, the fine seeds of the lycopodium plant, on the vibrating plate, we can indeed observe a completely different behavior.  At first, small heaps are formed, which suck in the material of the environment at the lower edge of the heap, directly above the plate, and release it from the center of the heap back to the outside.  If we slowly increase the volume (amplitude) of the sound, the suction at the edge increases to such an extent that small fountains appear at the surface.  At certain frequencies, these ejections begin to move in a circle, sometimes clockwise, sometimes in the opposite direction over the surface of the cluster – involuntarily, the image of the sun’s surface with its prominences arises inside the observer.

Jenny experimented with a variety of different substances and mixtures and found that there are big differences.  Liquids behave completely differently from solids.  Viscous mush forms spatial structures that are in constant internal circulation.  Water responds with wave patterns that often have star-shaped, flower-like manifestations.

We already suspect here the diversity of the phenomena.  Jenny writes: “We have before us the creating and the created, the oscillating, the sounding and the oscillation-generated, the sound-generated.  Now this does not prepare itself so simply and harmlessly.  The happening of the wave process takes place in complicated relations, in interferences, resonances, turbulences, in harmonies, consonance, in disharmony, in dissonance, in frequency spectra, amplitude relations, etc.  In this sphere of the manifold creation, the observer moves.  It must be proved whether, in this abundance, basic and primal phenomena, from which ‘everything’ can be grasped, can be found.”^[11] 

If we look at the phenomena described so far, we can find two fundamental poles. On the one side the structural, figural, the shape, the form; and on the other side the dynamic, flowing, the movement; the whole produced and maintained by the periodic or rhythmic being.  These three appear in every oscillation phenomenon as a unity; even if sometimes one of the three elements comes more to the fore, the others are always present, even necessary.  Jenny summarizes it in this way: “In a vibration process and in a vibration effect, there always appear figural, structural elements, but also kinetic and dynamic processes; the whole shows periodic nature, which generates and sustains everything.  The three areas, the periodic as basic area, with the two poles – figure and dynamic – always appear as one.  It is quite impossible to take away one or the other; it is not possible to take away at all without the thing becoming extinct.  Thus, one cannot enumerate first, second, third, but can only say: appearing threefold and yet one; presenting itself as one and yet threefold.”^[12]  Thus Jenny calls this trinity a basic or primordial phenomenon; henceforth, he calls it the Triadic Primordial Phenomenon. Once this step of cognition has been accomplished and the observer has trained himself on the cymatic processes, this triadic primordial phenomenon appears manifold in the world.

Jenny always sought contact with the scientists of various disciplines of his time, among them Werner Heisenberg and Manfred von Ardenne.  Jenny writes: “One can gain the Triadic Primordial Phenomenon as an experiential idea in histology and cell physiology, in morphology, biology and functional science; but equally in geology and mineralogy; in atomic physics and astronomy, etc.”^[13]  He goes a step further when he writes: “Contact with artists, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers and historians has shown us that not only the aspect of general periodicity, but also the view of a triadic model of the world – trinity of shape, wave and force – has validity in these fields. Rhythms of history; resonances, interferences, standing, continuous waves in human relations; the wave-like up-and-down surging of memories, thoughts and affects in a periodic way, poetry, and music, all these are topics that showed themselves to us in conversations with numerous personalities and the illumination of the triadic primordial phenomenon. […] But it should be emphasized that these references are not metaphors or analogies, but the recognition of homologous systems.”^[14]

Hans Jenny concludes the first volume of Cymatics in 1967 with the words “Again and again and yet anew, the cymatic procedure reveals the triadic primordial phenomenon as which man can grasp and comprehend himself.” ^[15]

It remains for us to pursue the question posed at the outset as to why the human voice is capable of generating significantly more complex cymatic processes than is possible with technical equipment. Jenny writes about this:

“Methodos [the ancient Greek word] actually means ‘going after’. We go after the larynx, which potentially encompasses in its capacity the whole cymatics, thus is also a primordial organ, or better – to name the relevant category here, in the true, real sense – is the primordial word.  So, what is the primordial word? This is the one on which we direct ourselves as on a mysteriousness, to which we try to approach methodically in cymatics, to which we want to consecrate ourselves under use of all looking and listening powers of judgment, emerging from the foundations of modern natural sciences.

We are not chasing after a phantom, that is for sure, but we direct our powers of perception to the organism of speech, and also to the organism of hearing, which is uniformly connected with it, both of which reveal an almost all-embracing mysteriousness.  We move towards a creative world, towards a world-creating power.  With this alone – with the creative – for the researcher, for the artist, for every living human being an element is given, in which he can breathe, live, form, work.  We do not dither and hesitate: Will something come out?  Will the riddles be solved?  Will we get through alive?  How will this adventure end?  We are in the reality of the riddles; in them we become; man is not, he becomes with ever fuller and clearer consciousness. (He who grasps the thought of development vividly will not be able to assume that human beings already exist; he will rather notice that human beings first ‘become’ human beings).  If he then looks back on the grandeur of the past, he does so in independence and self-reliance.  But then he feels a real resonance in the admiration and veneration of those harmonious world pictures; after all, he carries the new cosmos in his heart as the mystery of the primordial word urging to revelation. Thus, we cast a methodical foresight on further cymatic research.”^[16]  With these bequeathed lines, Hans Jenny closes the second volume of Cymatics, published in the year of his death, 1972. We can take this quote as a legacy and a guiding star towards a contemporary path of research in cymatics.

Further reading:

Hans Jenny, Cymatics – A Study of Wave Phenomena, MACROmedia Publishing.

Atmani: Cymatics Volume 1 – Introduction to The Basic Conditions Of Contemporary World and Human Considerations, Mani Verlag, Hirschhorn, 2015.

Atmani / Peter Daniell Porsche: The Tone of the Earth and the Tone of Man, Mani Verlag, Hirschhorn 2013.

Footnotes:

^[1] Margaret Watts Hughes, The Eidophon – Voice Figures (Geometrical and Natural Forms Produced by Vibrations of the Human Voice), Reprint, Mani Verlag, Hirschhorn, 2013.

^[2] Voice Figures, The Spectator Archive. The Spectator. August 29, 1891.

^[3] Michaela Spaar: Auf der Suche nach der formbildenden Kraft – Zum 100. Geburtstag von Hans Jenny, Das Goetheanum, Nr. 31-32/2004

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Hans Jenny, Tierlandschaften “Animal Landscapes” – MACROmedia Publishing.

^[6] Unpublished diary from the estate of Hans Jenny.

^[7] According to an interview in the TV Documentary by Reinhard Eichelbeck, Dr. Jenny’s Klangfiguren – Die formbildende Kraft der Schwingung, ZDF, 1991.

^[8] Don Vollen, Die gemeinsame Quelle von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Werke Hans Jenny, in Hans Jenny, Tierlandschaften – Raffael-Verlag, Ittigen, 1992.

^[9] Hans Jenny, Der Typus, Natura-Naturata, Dornach, 1954.

^[10] From the diary of Hans Jenny, quoted from Hans Jenny, Tierlandschaften – Raffael-Verlag, Ittigen, 1992.

^[11] Hans Jenny, Cymatic – A Study of Wave Phenomena, MACROmedia Publishing, p. 124f. This translated edition includes the first volume published in 1967 and the second volume published in 1972.

^[12] Ibid, p. 117.

^[13] Ibidem, p. 118.

^[14] Ibidem p. 121.

^[15] Ibidem p. 121.

^[16] Ibidem p. 274f.