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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.  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.

     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 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!

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"?

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." 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."  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.

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."

• 604 track _Kyma_ MP3 by Darshan off of _Awakening_ 12"x3 on Flying Rhino (1998)
• track _Of The Building Of Forms By Vibrations_ MP3 (160k) by The Hafler Trio off of _All That Rises Must Converge_ CD on Mute (1993)
• release _Cymatic Scan_ CDS by Bill Laswell and Tetsu Inoue on Axiom (1995)
• Crop Circles

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