Sound has been an invisible force throughout history that permeates every aspect of our lives. Traffic noise, sirens, airplanes thundering overhead, and other jarring sounds jolt our nerves, while the sounds of nature and music flow over us and around us like soothing waters, lifting our spirit, inspiring us, exciting us. Yet if we could see sound, our world would be even more beautiful than nature has gifted us to see—a world filled with shimmering, holographic bubbles, and wherever a bubble meets a surface, an invisible kaleidoscopic pattern is imprinted.
If asked to visualize sound or music, we might imagine a wave undulating through the air, since we were taught in school that sound is a wave. However, while classical texts refer to sound and music travelling in waves, this model relates only to the graph of sound not to what we might refer to as sound’s physical ”space form.” In the real world, audible sounds travel through the air as bubbles. Sound bubbles pulsate in and out and it is the rhythmic movement of this pulsation that, when graphed, is depicted as a wave….[…]
German musician and scientist, Ernst Chladni, (1756–1827) applied this simple physics principle with great flair. He made sand-strewn metal plates ring by playing their edges with a violin bow, creating beautiful sand patterns known today as “Chladni Figures.” Chladni became famous throughout Europe and even demonstrated this seemingly magical phenomenon to Napoleon. The French leader was so impressed he sponsored a competition with the Paris Academy of Sciences to acquire a mathematical explanation of the sound patterns. Sophie Germain (1776–1831), a young French woman, won Napoleon’s three-thousand-franc prize….[..]
images and article c/o The Ruben. 2021. CYMATICS: SOUND SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE. [ONLINE] Available at: https://rubinmuseum.org/spiral/cymatics-sound-science-of-the-future?hcb=1. [Accessed 23 September 2021].
Platypus Lady 