The Transformative Properties of Rock and Water

By Leslie McGuire, managing editor

“Dancing water intimates existence throughout the centuries. It alludes to that which is still or timeless. Stillness beckons motion. Motion beckons stillness. They embrace in harmony.” —Yoshikawa
Image courtesy of Yoshikawa

Perhaps it’s difficult for Westerners—who are trapped into production, expansion, precision, projection, progression, et al., to settle down and contemplate the infinite. Perhaps they need to be enticed, or seduced, or entrapped into contemplation. Perhaps, their internal poetry yearns to be released from the mechanistic constructs that bind them to their constant activity. Perhaps water and wind across rock and stone provide the mechanism that can transform and ground even the most intense practitioner of busy work.

“We’re not copying nature. We’re understanding the dynamics of nature and how people perceive those dynamics. A concept image is what you feel about something you see. In waterfalls and rockwork and nature, that phenomenon takes place in one millisecond. If I want to engender a feeling, I create the dynamic that will produce that feeling.” — Philip di Giacomo
Image courtesy of Philip Di Giacomo

The Permanent Impermanence of Water

In addition to its natural and aesthetic appeal, water—and especially the sound of water in motion—has philosophical overtones. Water is always changing yet always there. It is a perfect symbol of the “permanent impermanence” of the universe as expressed in both Buddhist and Daoist thought.

“The structure of water – the reason for its peculiar properties – is a major question in chemistry and physics,” said Richard Saykally from University of California, Berkeley. Water was thrust into the scientific limelight recently, when a team of scientists led by Anders Nilsson from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center presented evidence that water is more loosely bound than previously thought.

Water makes up 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and is the main component — about 80 percent — of all living things. But, it is far from ordinary. “We think we understand everything there is about a single water molecule. What we don’t understand so well is how they interact with each other,” said Saykally.

“If I build a swimming pool or a pond, what I figure out is how can I build a space that will strengthen your relationships and bring you closer to your children. Families who think of the family tend to be morally responsible.” — Philip di Giacomo
Image courtesy of Philip Di Giacomo

The Metamorphoses of Living Rocks

Rocks and stones are alive, just as water is alive, but clearly, rocks all have very different mineral properties. As a naturally occurring crystalline solid, ice is also considered a mineral consisting of hydrogen oxide. Sometimes in the mineral composition of each rock, organic meets inorganic.

Limestone is the solidification—succumbing over millennia, to pressure and heat—of millions of tiny skeletons. There are entire classes of rocks formed from what was once alive—coal, petrified wood, flint. They’ve all transformed from a warm world of decay to the cold world of crystalline permanence.

Fountains give life to gardens and urban spaces. Splashing water from fountain jets seize attention and enhance a garden’s seclusion by drowning out city noise. Ceramics and gardens go well together. The subtle colors and textures of the glazes can create delicate back drops for fountains and water features.
Image courtesy of Craig Bragdy Design

Philip di Giacomo: Rock as a Qualitative Influence

“My approach to doing water projects is not cliché. I’m not trying to make spaces that are beautiful, but spaces that are transformative—though not by conventional means. They should create a qualitative change.” Philip di Giacomo collects and installs the rocks. He, incidentally, chose and sited the rocks for the Peter Walker designed Tanner Fountain at Harvard University. Although the water is part of the form, it is the rock, in di Giacomo’s view, that creates a dynamic for social responsibility.

“Rock work ends up being a mirror of nature, but you don’t start out that way. There are three aspects to the dynamic. First, if you “see” a thing, you have an automatic objective response. But second, in order for you to “perceive” that same thing, I have to do something specific. So seeing and perception are fundamentally different, because your brain always takes the next step and assigns subjective meaning.

“Social responsibility is the third issue. In the time we’ve talked there are probably 100 children who have starved to death in the world. A child under the age of 15 dies every two and a half seconds. As a human being you must have some social responsibility.

“I conceived the water channel at the Vera Katz Park as a sculpture, where neighbors could interact with the wall and the water. You can sit on the stone, walk on it, and enjoy it. When it came time to select the stone to accomplish this, the primary consideration was finding what feels right, since it’s always an artistic decision.” —Scott Murase, Affiliate ASLA, Murase Associates
Image courtesy of Murase Associates

“Isamu Noguchi said if you have a special gift you have a moral responsibility to do something good with it. The role of art should be social. Anyone can throw stuff together. But when you have an opportunity to qualitatively influence someone’s life you should do it.

“I’m most proud of the fact that I’ve never worked for money, I’ve worked to improve relationships.

“In my view there’s no such thing as beauty. Your motive has to be to improve the quality of life. You can’t do this subjectively. First you have to figure out how people see. What do people think about nature? How does nature work? How do their brains work? Then you back up. Having learned all this stuff, you figure out how to apply it. Culture is what engenders cliché judgments and people fall into that. The up front work I do is important because it shows me how to make something personally meaningful for people.

“My job is not to get you to change, it’s to put the change in front of you. Most people will get it if it’s done well. Vince Van Heukelem, of Colorado Hardscapes, knows he wants this kind of artistry and the social responsibility that goes with it, and that’s why I chose to work with him. He gets it.

A sculptural shell is suspended at one end of an oval indoor pool, connecting the inside and outside pool spaces. Created by Craig Bragdy Design, this handmade structure forms a “magical” canopy lavishly decorated with mother-of-pearl lusters while enhancing and echoing every splash and sound as swimmers pass beneath.
Image courtesy of Craig Bragdy Design

Peter Walker: A Fountain for All Seasons

Peter Walker, FASLA,designed the Tanner Fountain at Harvard University, which has won the 2008 Landmark Award given by the ASLA and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Constructed without a basin, this innovative design not only transformed fountain design it also allowed it to be heavily used in all seasons. Walker said of the fountain: “Children play. Students read, flirt, converse, meditate, brood. Spring rain, summer grass, autumn leaves, winter winds and snow: All are emphasized by and in turn emphasize the fountain, which takes on the feeling of a natural object, one that points to the truth that humans, too, are part of nature.

It was also the first institutional project of the ‘Landscape as Art’ movement, growing out of the then-new Expression Studio offered by the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Design School. It continues to prove that landscape architecture is an art, the landscape architect an artist.”

“At the center of the Tanner Fountain at Harvard University, where the circle of stones appears to be most dense, the water mist produces a scrim that visually dematerializes the stones. The mist is refracted by daylight to produce rainbows. At night, lights charge the mist with a mysterious glow. In the winter, when mist would freeze, the stones are shrouded with steam from the university heating plant. When quiescent, the fountain becomes the underpinning for the elegant displays of snow that Cambridge so unfailingly provides.” — Peter Walker, FASLA
Image courtesy of Peter Walker Partners

Yoshikawa: Stone, Water and Transformation

According to stone fountain creator, Yoshikawa, “The basic unit of this universe is two. Each defines the other, each informs the other. We can know the hardness of the stone because we understand the fluidity of the water. The interplay of the two creates transformation. Water flowing over stone; stillness experiencing motion; motion experiencing stillness. The mutual experience is the sound of water and stone.

That sound is transformative. The harmony is only broken when all is motion or all is stillness. The interplay of motion and stillness is what we know as life in the physical universe. Other universes are waiting to be created.”

“The fountain at One Penn Plaza was inspired by a steam vent in the street and is suggestive of all of the unseen infrastructure that is below people’s feet. I hoped to present a provocative reminder of that mysterious side of New York City.” —Thomas Balsley , FASLA, Thomas Balsley Associates
Image courtesy of Thomas Balsley Associates

Thomas Balsley: The Mystery of Mist

As the creator of the fountain at One Penn Plaza, Thomas Balsley, FASLA, “chose a pyramid because of its timeless form, which has been split open to suggest even greater mysteries within. The fountain itself is made of Stony Creek Granite – a local stone commonly used to build New York City in the 19th century.

“The visual effect is created with fog emitted through nozzles in the slots. The pyramid rests in a shallow basin whose cascading sound is audible. The fog is extremely dynamic; changing in identity and moving with the wind and air currents. With lights, it appears to be flames at night.”

Isamu Noguchi’s Water Stone embrace contrasts found in nature: the movement and sound of water against the solidity and stillness of stone; the hues and textures of rock in contrast to the transparency and smoothness of water; and the permanence of stone versus the transience of water.
Image courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scott Murase: Three Levels of Purpose

The Vera Katz Park water feature designed by Scott Murase, Affiliate ASLA, Murase Associates, is both an urban oasis and an integral part of the building’s storm water management. The design features drought-tolerant landscaping and a bioswale to filter storm water from the sidewalk, in addition to the elegant stone water channel.

This charcoal black granite water feature collects rainwater from an underground cistern and runs it artfully along the side of the building into a bioswale.

The stone used for the park’s water channel is black Chinese basalt from a small village in Southern China. “The tradition of working with stone and water is what we’ve always done. However, for this project we really wanted to sculpt it.

“Basically it’s a simple design,” says Murase. “The source stone is where the water comes from, then it flows down at a five-percent grade. The walls create places to sit. We sloped the sidewalk to capture the water and send it to the flow-through strip of planting adjacent to the building. This was a LEED Platinum building.”

“We wanted the fountain rock on this residential patio to relate to the rocks placed around the edge and look as if the surrounding tile was also part of the rocks, as an existing element. The water coming out of the top of the cored rock slowly trickles, giving a quiet effect that acts as white noise, or a soft background music.” — Bruce Lowe, ASLA, Clark and Company
Image courtesy of Clark and Company

Isamu Noguchi: The Tension Between Water and Stone

Noguchi’s stone basin is both familiar and surprising: rather than pouring down into the well, water flows up from the ground into the basin.

Water Stone rests upon a bed of white rocks taken from the flats of the Isuzu River, which flows along the sacred site of Ise Shrine. Noguchi recognized water as a natural maker of sculpture, here gradually eroding and rusting the iron-rich basalt.

The sculpture also underscores tensions between natural and human-defined elements. Noguchi alternated naturally worn, curvilinear outer rock surfaces with smoothly polished planes created through deliberate, angular cuts into the stone.

The irregular circumference of the rounded form contrasts with the perfect circle of the central well. The cut circle introduces layers of symbolic meaning, representing the life cycle, seasonal cycle, sun, full moon, or enso symbol of Zen enlightenment, perfection, and unity. It may also simply evoke a ring created by a pebble dropped into water.

Bruce Lowe: Water as Background Music

Bruce Lowe, ASLA, of Clark and Company, designed this patio fountain. Made of granite, the spear shaped stone is oriented so the other two facets can be seen clearly from all sides. The rock was cored so water flows out of the top and down. In this feature, he was trying to make sure people were able to view it from inside house, from the patio, from the landscape looking back to the house and all perspectives. He also wanted to make it appear as if the rock were floating, suspended just above the water. “We used a gunnite pool finish that was black to give the illusion of depth—infinite depth. The water coming out of the top of the cored rock slowly trickles, giving a quieting effect. In this way, we created a piece that is visual, auditory and spiritual, all at the same time.”

The Harmonic Sound Garden is a Fountain/Wind Harp. “Why not create a 21st century Interactive Sound and Water Garden? We are tied to this beautiful fluid medium for survival, so let’s celebrate its beauty and use its brilliance and purity to create wholeness and balance. Everything that exists, either animate or inanimate, has it’s own unique vibration and that vibration is mirrored in water.” — Ross Barrable, Soundscapes International
Image courtesy of Soundscapes International

Craig Bragdy: Enhancing the Music of Water

A sculptural shell is suspended at one end of an oval indoor pool, connecting the inside and outside pool spaces. This handmade structure forms a ‘magical’ canopy lavishly decorated with mother-of-pearl lusters and echoing with every splash and sound as swimmers pass beneath. Craig Bragdy’s design was fully able to ‘hang out’ across the pool without structure. The ceramics to clad the inner and outer surfaces were designed to be quite different to each other and to closely mimic the surface of real life shells. The inner surface being smooth and decorated with a creamy, pink and white color glaze and mother-of-pearl lusters, and the outer being textured and matt in finish. The inspiration for this vision of a huge sculptural piece came initially from an elaborate Indian decorative silver platter measuring just 12 inches across.

The Invisible Workings of Water and Wind

Because water is an extraordinarily sensitive element it can and does respond to outside stimuli—such as the sound of voices, and the music of the wind.

Interestingly enough, Harvard Physics Professor Gerald J. Holton noticed that when sound waves pass through water, they lose more energy than they theoretically should (Time). A possible explanation: water molecules may be arranged in groups like small, loose crystals, rather than a simple mass of independent molecules. If there are such “crystals,” a sound wave would distort them, thus expending some of its energy.

Masaru Emoto, author of “The Messages from Water” freezes droplets of water and then examines them under a dark field microscope that has photographic capabilities. Water from pristine mountain streams and springs shows the beautifully formed geometric designs in their crystalline patterns. Polluted and toxic water show definitively distorted and randomly formed crystalline structures. Emoto says, “It is also quite clear that water easily takes on the vibrations and energy of its environment, including music, voices, or prayers.”

Ross Barrable: Harmonic Sound Garden

“Water’s function in the creative equation is that it allows life to exist. Water is a receptive and living entity. Water is the medium through which we experience our reality. Our bodies are bathed in water. It’s the electrolyte that allows biological communication to happen. The quality of the water has everything to do with our state of consciousness,” says Ross Barrable, of Soundscapes by Spectrum Enterprises. A luthier and musician, he creates Wind Harps.

“Since we are all 70 percent water and depend on water for our survival, would it be too outrageous to consider that perhaps this medium is here to serve the evolution of consciousness in the human form. With such a high calling, perhaps water itself also has consciousness, an awareness, an ability to respond to vibrational information and energy. “So why not create our own sacred sites with water, sound and stone. We can do it by studying ancient sites and by following our own intuition. Perhaps the true purpose of the sacred sites of old was to assist humanity in retrieving that inner connection to the higher self and spiritual identity.”

If Trees are the Voice Box of the Wind, Then Wind is the Song of the Universe.

Cymascope has developed a sound imagery device that sends vibrations through a speaker and vibrates a thin water-covered membrane. This creates a sound bubble image called a Cymaglyph®. Photographed with a video camera, the bubble shows in real time how matter is structured by sound and the especially profound influence sound has on water. Below are images showing the affect on water of music created by a Soundscapes Wind Harp. www.cymascope.com