The Voice Flowers of Margaret Watts Hughes
In 1885, Margaret Watts Hughes invented the eidophone, a device that translated the vibrations of her voice into patterns on a glycerin-coated elastic membrane. It allowed her to paint with song. Her original 1891 article is worth reading:
In 1885, while seeking means to indicate readily the intensities of vocal sounds, I first met with these figures, and, owing to their variety both in form and production, they have since absorbed much of my attention. The apparatus I have employed I call the eidophone. This is very simple. It consists merely of an elastic membrane, such as thoroughly flexible soft sheet-rubber, tightly stretch over the mouth of a receiver of any form, into which receiver the voice is introduced by a wide-mouthed tube of convenient shape.
…
I would add that my experiments have been made as a vocalist, using my own voice as the instrument of investigation, and I must leave it for others more acquainted with natural science to adjust the accordance of these appearances with facts and laws already known. Yet, passing from one stage to another of these inquiries, question after question has presented itself to me, until I have continually felt myself standing before mystery, in great part hidden, although some glimpses seem revealed. And I must say, besides, that as day by day I have gone on singing into shape these peculiar forms, and, stepping out of doors, have seen their parallel living in the flowers, ferns, and trees around me; and, again, as I have watched the little heaps in the formation of the floral figures gather themselves up and then shoot out their petals, just as flowers springs from the swollen bud – the hope has come to me that these humble experiments may afford some suggestions in regard to nature’s production of her own beautiful forms, and may thereby aid, in some slight degree, the revelation of yet another link in the great chain of the organized universe that, we are told in Holy Writ, took its shape as the voice of God.
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:18 am
[...] In 1885, Margaret Watts Hughes invented the eidophone, a device that translated the vibrations of her voice into patterns on a glycerin-coated elastic membrane. It allowed her to paint with song. [Thanks to the Kirchner Society] [...]
June 4th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Hmm. I’m skeptical. It looks to me like she may have generated some basic vibrational patterns and then manually ‘enhanced’ the floral aspect to suit her own ends…
Having played with vibrational visuals a bit, I can tell you that images like the ’seaweed’ form are not likely to occur. If you look closely, the background ‘texture’ is more like what you get from vibrations. The seaweed-like branching forms look to me like they have been painted later.
Her writing reminded me of something and I realised just now what it was - the tone of spirit-mediums of the time. Who weren’t shy of faking things either…
June 5th, 2006 at 7:17 am
While on the subject of visualising sound, this is what happens when you play a range of frequences at a tray covered in rice:
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/05/incredible-spooky-video-about.html
June 5th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Dear Proceedings,
I deeply recomend to you and your readers Pauline Oliveros’s manifesto on Deep Listening.
She writes:
“Deep Listening is a practice that I have created and taught over many years of exploration and discovery. For me sound and music are never-ending sources of fascination and of connection with the world around me and inside of me. I hear sound and music with my inner ear as well as my outer ear. Listening is the heart of my profession as a musician and composer. Listening connects me with the vital spirit of being. The poems, scores and writings of my students confirm this to me.
Hearing is an involuntary physical act that happens through our primary sense organ when sound waves impinge upon the ear. Everyone with healthy ears can hear. Listening takes cultivation and evolves through one’s lifetime.
Listening is noticing and directing attention and interpreting what is heard. Deep Listening is exploring the relationship among any and all sounds. Hearing is passive. We can hear without listening. This is the state of being tuned out - unaware of our acoustic ecology - unaware that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings has profound effect near and in the far reaches of the universe. We can hear sounds inwardly from memory or imagination or outwardly from nature, or from civilization. Listening is actively directing one’s attention to what is heard, noticing and directing the interaction and relationships of sounds and modes of attention. We hear in order to listen. We listen in order to interpret ourselves and our world and to experience meaning.
Our world is made of vibrations as we are made of vibrations. Vibration connects us with all beings and connects us to all things. We open ourselves to vibration in order to listen to the world as a field of possibilities and we listen with narrowed attention for specific things in the world such as the music we might be performing. We interpret what we hear according to the way we are listening. Through accessing many forms of listening we grow and change whether we are listening to the sounds of our daily lives, the environment or to music.
For me, Deep Listening is a lifetime practice. The more I listen the more I learn to listen. Deep Listening involves going below the surface of what is heard and also expanding to the whole field of sound whatever one’s usual focus might be. Such forms of listening are essential to the process of unlocking layer after layer of imagination, meaning, and memory down to the cellular level of human experience. Listening is the key to performance. Responses, whatever the discipline, that originate from Deep Listening are connected in resonance with being and inform the artist, art and audience in an effortless harmony.
Babies are the best Deep Listeners.”
http://www.deeplistening.org/
Kindest Regards,
Andrés Hax
June 7th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
The seaweed and tree figures look like what you get when you press a sticky substance between two sheets of glass and then separate them again. (Hughes mentions doing this on page 40.)
It’s possible that vibrations would affect the formation of the branching structures while separating the layers, but I think it’s likely that she would have had the same results without singing at this stage. Perhaps she never thought to try it that way, though she did write that “it is essential to sing a peculiar and powerful note at the precise moment that the plate and the disk, which had adhered together, are separated.”
October 8th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
These must be Chaldni Figures due to various resonance patterns being set up on the dics.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I have been looking for an eidophone for years. Is it possible to find one somewhere to purchase?
Thank you.
November 24th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I just recently read, with great fascination about the eidophones. I MUST GET MY HANDS ON ONE!!!!! I need to know how these instruments work, what do you look like, how to you get the visual image from sound, on what??? surgace???
Any information would be greatly appreciated…Thanks!