Cymatics - connection between sound, vibrations & physical reality?

[Dover]

Cymatics - connection between sound, vibrations & physical reality?



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.

By Peter Pettersson, translation Yarrow Cleaves


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.

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.
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.

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.
Cont'd
http://www.mysticalsun.com/cymatics/cymatics.html





Lissajous animations online: http://ibiblio.org/e-notes/Lis/Lissa.htm

OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....sound and sacred geometry.

Sri Yantra

In Hans Jenny's tonoscope experiments the sounding of 'OM' produces the circle O which is then filled in with concentric squares and triangles, finally producing (when last traces of sound have died away) the geometric expression of sacred vibration found in many world religions

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. Experimentation with modern languages general produced chaos. Is it possible that the ancient Hebrews and Indians knew this? Could there be something to the concept of "sacred language?" Would other sacred languages produce similar results i.e. Tibetan, Egyptian or Chinese. These languages have always proposed that they have the capacity to influence and transform physical reality through the recitation or chanting of sacred syllables and mantras.

This to me proves the existence of magic words! Creative phrases that transform the physical reality we see around us. There are legends of Navajo shaman being able to whisper words that created patterns in the sand.

"First there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God" John 1:1 KJB

Words, thoughts, feelings, are all powerfully creative things. Be clear about your intent. What geometry are you making? Are you contributing to or contaminating your environment? Take charge and responsibility for what sound you create.

http://bvb.hopto.org/circles/cymatics.html

Listen to a sound sample of OM -
http://www.body-mind.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Return_Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=AAHEART&Category_Code=MARC&Product_Code=SY

[Dover]

1. Sound vibrations, sacred geometry, mandalas

http://www.isibrno.cz/~gott/mandalas.htm

[Me.]

2. Don't Know If This Actually Relates

but on CSI the other night they talked about acoustical archeology, where you could pick up the sounds, or words that were spoken, as something which had grooves in it was being created. Their example was a clay pot with grooves that was being spun on a wheel while a conversation was being had. They could recreate the conversation from the spaces created by the grooves, as in creating a record.

[Dover]

3. If you've ever looked at sound as it is translated to electrical impulses

on a screen, or if it's digitalized onto a computer, the sound has an actual shape. So you can "build" sounds by recreating these shapes, I suppose. It's a pretty fascinating field of study.

[loudsue]

4. Wow....this makes me want to go learn Hebrew!

"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. Experimentation with modern languages general produced chaos. Is it possible that the ancient Hebrews and Indians knew this? Could there be something to the concept of "sacred language?" Would other sacred languages produce similar results i.e. Tibetan, Egyptian or Chinese. These languages have always proposed that they have the capacity to influence and transform physical reality through the recitation or chanting of sacred syllables and mantras."

Sanskrit is prolly a little harder ;)

It's interesting that modern languages produce chaos...it's for sure SOMETHING is creating chaos in the modern world!

:kick:

[Dover]

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[Dover]

6. That is the most fascinating part to me too. Consider that BEFORE

we had the current alphabet and modern written language, symbolic/hieroglyphic language was used, which I feel certain activates a different area of the brain...and engages a person more holistically. The ancient spoken languages might have had a sympathetic resonance with basic cellular and etheric structures and energies within "humans/animals/life forms that is not activated through the modern versions. What was once understood to be animated life forms are now basically seen as inanimate objects outside us, which we could/would not see ourselves having a relationship with.

I would highly recommend reading the beautifully written, lyrical book called, Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram, which begins to address these language issues as they have changed throughout history and effect us and the way we 'sense' and relate in the world. It also becomes a study in being fully present.
Some of the chapter titles should give a feel for the subject matter:

The Ecology of Magic

The Flesh of Language (Word Magic)

Animism and the Alphabet

The Landscape of Language (Dreamtime)

Time, Space and the Eclipse of the Earth

The Forgetting and Remembering of the Air

[Dover]

5. Researchers Find Where Musical Memories Are Stored In The Brain

Dartmouth Researchers Find Where Musical Memories Are Stored In The Brain

A group of Dartmouth researchers has learned that the brain's auditory cortex, the part that handles information from your ears, holds on to musical memories.

In a study titled "Sound of silence activates auditory cortex" published in the March 10 issue of Nature, the Dartmouth team found that if people are listening to music that is familiar, they mentally call upon auditory imagery, or memories, to fill in the gaps if the music cuts out. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity, the researchers found that study participants could mentally fill in the blanks if a familiar song was missing short snippets.

"We played music in the scanner , and then we hit a virtual 'mute' button," says first author David Kraemer, a graduate student in Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. "We found that people couldn't help continuing the song in their heads, and when they did this, the auditory cortex remained active even though the music had stopped."

The researchers say that this finding extends previous work on auditory imagery and parallels work on visual imagery, which both show that sensory-specific memories are stored in the brain regions that created those events. Their study, however, is the first to investigate a kind of auditory imagery typical of everyday experience.

"It's fascinating that although the ear isn't actually hearing the song, the brain is perceptually hearing it," says coauthor William Kelley, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth...cont'd

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050425202958.htm