The word Cymatics derives from the Greek 'kuma' meaning 'billow' or 'wave,' to describe the periodic effects that sound and vibration has on matter.

The study of the patterns produced by vibrating bodies has a venerable history. One of the earliest to notice that an oscillating body displayed regular patterns was Galileo Galilei, who wrote in his 1632 book, "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems":
As I was scraping a brass plate with a sharp iron chisel in order to remove some spots from it and was running the chisel rather rapidly over it, I once or twice, during many strokes, heard the plate emit a rather strong and clear whistling sound: on looking at the plate more carefully, I noticed a long row of fine streaks parallel and equidistant from one another. Scraping with the chisel over and over again, I noticed that it was only when the plate emitted this hissing noise that any marks were left upon it; when the scraping was not accompanied by this sibilant note there was not the least trace of such marks.

Having done thousands of photos of sound resonance in water and many hundreds of short films, I produced the film
- Message of Sound -
which is released as DVD by Oreade music.

See for more information: DVD - Message of Sound
You can order the DVD and posters, also on aluminium
at: http://www.klank-en-vorm.eu

Here below are some photos of my experiments
of sound-resonance in water:

and see some more images: Sound-resonance in water