ResonanceLaboratorium
Ernst Chladni dusted square plates with fine sand, drew a violin bow across the edge, and made standing waves visible. Grains fled the antinodes and settled on the silent nodal lines — geometry from sound itself.
method
Each grain executes a random walk whose step length scales with the local amplitude of the standing wave. Where the wave vanishes — the nodal lines — the grain settles and the figure emerges.
marginalia
Pairs (m,n) and (n,m) yield congruent figures rotated by a quarter turn. Equal indices m = n produce diagonal lattices; coprime indices produce lace-like asymmetry. Try (3, 7) at low vibration for the canonical Chladni rose.
colophon
Set in Cormorant Garamond & JetBrains Mono. After Chladni's Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges, Leipzig 1787. Pressed in the Fezcodex laboratory, anno MMXXVI.