An Eidophone consists of a hollow funnel with a membrane stretched across it, and a tube attached to its base with a mouthpiece at the far end. Fine powder is sprinkled across the membrane. As you sing down the tube, resonant frequencies create harmonic patterns in the membrane, with peak areas of high amplitude, and node areas of stillness. As the harmonic is held, the powder jiggles away from the peaks and into the nodes, creating graphic formations. The interplay of different resonant frequencies produces results of increasing complexity, suggestive of the strange symbolic orders of both fundamental physics (cf. esp. resonance and string theory), and secret sects (cf. Glyconic snake cults, Russian mafia tattoos etc.).
The chesty Victorian singer Margaret Watts Hughes, who belted diatonic scales down an Eidophone for most of the 1880s, prefered floral interpretations. She would entice socially elite guests into her drawing room to witness her “sing a daisy”.
Margaret Watts Hughes Eidophone patterns
