Author: Cinzia Valente

There are at least two types of beauty, the subjective one, which depends on taste, and the universal one, which pertains to resonance. Beauty can be said to be universal, or universally recognised, if the observer can resonate with it beyond culture, religion, place of birth and one’s own aesthetic canons. Resonance is a complex and fascinating phenomenon, still widely studied. The most immediate example is offered by the tuning fork, that small metal object used to tune musical instruments, which begins to vibrate when hit by the note to which it is calibrated. The phenomenon of resonance can occur between a guitar string and a tuning fork because they are both designed to emit the same note. When the instrument is not well tuned the phenomenon does not occur, so we intervene by modifying the tension of the string until we obtain the sound capable of vibrating in phase with the tuning fork. Two elements are in resonance when their vibrations (the primary and the induced one) become indistinguishable from each other. The same principle can also happen for us human beings when we resonate with something designed like us. We can feel an energetic phenomenon, perceptually similar to what we define as empathy.