voi Cesa new field is emerging – time. Time is also organised and, only from the fusion
of both organisms, of time and space, does the highest meaning of all life and
existence originate. Change is everywhere; nowhere is there stasis. all things
have their own time and this does not consist in peaceful succession, which
never exists anywhere anyhow.
(Ritter 1803: 213f.)For Ritter, physics – particularly experimental physics – was a praxis whereby the
inner states and processes of the motion of matter, which were imperceptible, could
be rendered visible, audible, and felt in his own body: to render what is intangible, yet
nevertheless present, perceptible to the senses, to translate it into data, which could
then be calculated and materialized in technical artefacts. in Ritter’s Heterodoxies, as
he referred to his essays, sound and light are ultimately one: ‘hearing is seeing from
within, the very innermost consciousness’ (Ritter 1984 [1810]: item 358). They are
simply different forms of expression of the one central phenomenon of electricity
and its various states of charge and oscillation. For the experimental researcher of
nature this was above all a question of the distribution of quantities on an infinite
scale: ‘...when bodies oscillate extremely fast, they glow’. The dynamic ‘light figure’ or
‘fire- writing’, which he enthuses over time and again, are for Ritter extremely high
frequency oscillations where sound passes over into light, a phenomenon that is only
visible, and which represents for him ‘the highest degree of reality’ (Rehm 1973).^2
When Ritter describes the opposite pole – the transitions to the low- frequency
sounds that humans can barely hear or not at all – he chooses a curious comparison:
the rotation of the earth on its axis, for example, may make a significant
sound; this is the oscillation of its internal conditions, which is caused by this;
the orbit around the sun may make a second [sound], the orbit of the moon
around the earth a third, and so on. here one gets the idea of a colossal
music, of which our own poor [music] is but a significant allegory ... as a
harmony this music can only be heard on the sun. For the sun, the entire
system of planets is one musical instrument. To the inhabitants of the sun its
notes may simply appear as the zest for life, however, to the sun’s mind itself it
is the ultimate and truest sound.
(Ritter 1984 [1810]: item 360)apart from novalis and his friends from the Jena circle of Romantics, two hundred
years ago neither scientists nor artists listened to Ritter. not least due to his eccentric
life style, the passionate experimenter was discriminated against, and for nearly a
century he was ignored by the scientific establishment. even today Ritter is regarded as
a refractory and awkward figure whom one only rediscovers arduously and against the
resistance of conservative historians of science.
a notable exception was the contemporary modern artist Joseph Beuys. not only
his view that life and art are identical, but many of his drawings, installations, and
ready- mades can be read as illustrations of Ritter’s work. Beuys’ ideas about energy,
electricity, specific materials such as felt, fats, and metals like iron and copper, seem as
though they have passed through the culture of experiment of the former apothecary’s