“Sound Figures” Sonic Effects in Art and Science since the 18th Century

The experiment was simple: Ernst Florens Chladni scattered sand on a glass plate and stroked the plate with a bow. The bow caused the plate to resonate and the plate’s vibrations caused the sand to collect in symmetrical figures. The figures formed by the sand were seen to reflect the vibrations of the plate, and thereby make sound visible, in 1787, as it never had been before. Chladni called these figures Klangfiguren: “Sound Figures.” Their significance goes well beyond acoustic physics, however. As figures of thought they have captured the imaginations of philosophers, psychologists, and artists ever since. Not merely objects of scientific inquiry, sound figures trace the nodes along which shifting theories of perception and knowledge have settled.

Our workshop addresses several such sound figures and their discursive effects in the 19th and 20th centuries, viz. tact, vibration, resonance, “Stimmung,” and “Zusammenklang.” The significance of each of these figures emerges at once from their physical and material basis and from their theoretical transformation into figures of thought. Charting the genealogy and effects of sound figures, the individual contributions address the lingering resonance of acoustic knowledge in discourse on sound, language, and meaning.

Events at Deutsches Haus are free and open to the public.

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