\u201cThere\u2019s something extraordinarily emotional about that fountain\u2026 The water is so alive\u2014it is life. And people get very emotional around it. You see people crying\u2014just overwhelmed by the spectacle.\u201d
\n
\nTransparent medusas rose to the sea\u2019s surface, throbbed there a moment, then flew off, swaying toward the Moon. Harmonising with the medusas, the sea itself would rise too, far beyond the summit of the mountain\u2019s peak, attracted by the heavenly stars. In each display the water would narrowly avoid skimming the edge of the Earth\u2019s plate \u2013 countering the effects of gravity in its daily show of flair and finesse.
\n
\nThe \u2018dancing\u2019 fountain was first described by Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician and engineer from Roman Egypt: \u201cA bird made to whistle by flowing water. A trumpet sounded by flowing water. Birds made to sing and be silent alternately by flowing water.\u201d From here, through recollections of the fountain at the centre of the garden of Eden, the parting seas and Aphrodite\u2019s Botticellian scallop-shell debut; alien mechanisms, the Pillars of Hercules and Louis XIV\u2019s will to demonstrate his power over nature, we eventually meet in Los Angeles, at the headquarters of WET \u2013 or, Water Entertainment Technologies \u2013\u00a0the firm behind the world\u2019s largest, most dynamic and hi-tech water features. Experience Passion. Experience WET.
\n
\nWET, founded by former Disney Imagineers Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon and Alan Robinson in 1983, has designed hundreds of fountains and water features around the world, using water, fire, ice, fog and lights, alongside music. Perhaps its most renowned work is the Fountains of the Bellagio, which front Steve Wynn\u2019s Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and are considered by Steven Spielberg to be, \u201cthe greatest single piece of public entertainment on planet Earth\u201d. In terms of physical scale, WET\u2019s most impressive creation is the Dubai Fountain, the world\u2019s largest choreographed fountain system set on a 30-acre manmade lake at the centre of Downtown Dubai.
\n
\nIn the \u2018Finale\u2019 to Plato\u2019s Phaedo, Socrates describes Tartarus, the deep abyss, a chasm bored right through the earth \u2013\u00a0quite the opposite to a shallow manmade lake in Dubai, but with a similar effect \u2013 where all rivers flow together: \u201cThis fluid has no bottom or resting place: it simply pulsates upwards and downwards, and the air and the wind round about it does the same\u2026 as the breath that men breathe is always exhaled and inhaled in succession, so the wind pulsates in unison with the fluid, creating terrible, unimaginable blasts as it enters and as it comes out.\u201d
\n
\nTartarus evokes the drama of the contemporary fountain, but the opposite expression. Being caught among its waters would only be in punishment, the axis of its abyss covering the axis of the *only recently identified!* spherical Earth. Swayed by his study of Pythagorean mathematics, Plato declared the world was declared \u201cround as from a lathe\u201d \u2013although at the time, the word \u2018world\u2019 commonly referred to the heavens: Tarturus\u2019 \u201cunimaginable blasts\u201d took in all the \u2018world\u2019s\u2019 horrors.
\n
\n\u2026
\n
\nAs the contemporary fountain reaches its peak in the desert of the United Arab Emirates, it also returns to its source, the desert \u2013 although over a couple of thousand years the fountain has shifted a couple of thousand kilometres east, from Roman Egypt to the Arabian Gulf. While what might be considered the main source of desert water is a mirage, or a contradiction in terms, underground springs, rivers and lakes aren\u2019t uncommon, and wells and oases \u2013\u00a0either dug or naturally formed \u2013\u00a0can support plant and animal life. Lakes occasionally form above ground in desert basins, from the precipitation or meltwater of glaciers above. They tend to be shallow, and consequently strong winds cause them to glide \u2013 like a stone skimming water \u2013\u00a0across low-lying land. When they evaporate off, the clay, salt or sand left behind\u00a0forms in shallow plates, known as playa; and in North America many of the playa are relics of Lake Bonneville, which covered much of Utah, Nevada and Idaho during the last ice age. In 1912, an area of the Bonneville Salt Flats was marked out for motor sports \u2013\u00a0the Bonneville Speedway \u2013\u00a0and since then it has been the location for a number of land speed records. The first was Sir Malcom Campbell\u2019s 1935 record of 301.129mph in the \u201cBlue Bird\u201d, and most recently Roger Schroer\u2019s 2016 record of 341.264mph, in the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3, an electric car specifically designed to break the land speed record on the Bonneville Speedway.
\n
\nAlthough the playa continue to erode, the various muscle cars, modified aircraft belly tanks and Harley Davidson Road Glides are having considerably less impact than climate change on the shifts in surface. In The Endless Summer \u2013\u00a0 the 1964 surf movie where narrator Bruce Brown follows two surfers as they circumnavigate the globe, following the summer, and searching out \u201cthe perfect wave\u201d \u2013 the trio ride the desert dunes on their route towards the water off South Africa\u2019s Cape St. Francis. Shifting the sands of time, they worked with the rhythm of the folds in the same way that they\u2019d later ride the curl of each wave. Brown, describes the sensations the camera couldn’t record:
\n
\n\u201cThe thing you can\u2019t show is the fantastic speed and the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. It\u2019s the kind of a wave that makes you talk to yourself. I couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of years these waves must have been breaking here, but until this day no one had ever ridden one.\u201d
\n
\nBoth the drivers pursuing land speed records, and the surfers seeking out the perfect wave, are attempting to defy the laws of physics. They are also, to differing extents, working with nature, letting it hold power over them, and define the terms. Neither are working against the laws of gravity.
\n
\n\u2026
\n
\nIn the Idea Playground, WET\u2019s R&D lab, their equivalent of Imagineers work to make water do the seemingly impossible, or at least the improbable. In \u201cWater Music\u201d, published in a 2010 edition of The New Yorker, writer John Seabrook considered the roots of the work of WET\u2019s innovators, and what came before their compressed-air cannons, which conquer the problem of gravity:
\n
\n\u201cWater is heavy, and fountain designers through the ages have been preoccupied with finding ways to counter the effects of gravity. The ancient Romans figured out how to use gravity to their advantage, by forcing water into fountains from high aqueducts; the weight of the down-rushing water created the head. During the Renaissance, the ancients\u2019 hydraulic innovations were rediscovered, and the Popes restored and embellished the fountains of Rome, commissioning the great sculptors of the day, who used water to give their figures the liquid glue of life. In the nineteenth century, mechanical water pumps began to be used in fountains, which made fountaineering easier, and today anyone with an electrical outlet can run one in his back yard.\u201d
\n
\nAs well as being heavy, water is unruly. While surfers work with the wave, and submit to the unknown, the fountaineer works against it, asserting their power over nature. A fountain can \u2018dignify the water\u2019 and as Seabrook wrote, give stone sculpture \u201cthe liquid glue of life\u201d; fountains patiently give lessons in transience, and choreographed drama, in a way that is diametrically opposed to the true nature of cascading, or undulating water. They symbolise both the emergence and disappearance of fresh, or chlorinated water, and mark the jubilant entry of water into a city. Mimicking the nature of a spring, the fountains and wells of ancient Rome would have been the primary source of fresh water in the city, before the advent of modern plumbing. Having figured out aqueducts, they channelled water towards the city for the sake of supply rather than performance, and the gleaming, often decorated stone wellsprings would form the centre of social life.
\n
\n\u2026
\n
\nThe channeling of water, via aqueducts, hydraulics or pumps, contains the ungraspable rush, while maintaining the wonder in its lively, life-giving swirl. As the moon invented natural rhythm, civilisation uninvented it, and in its place built altars to Man\u2019s influence. A prime example is Louis XIV\u2019s commissioning of Les Grandes Eaux Musicales at the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles. In doing so he invented the modern musical fountain, which synchronised the dancing water with music and fireworks. Sculpture formed the principal element, the water jets animating and enlivening the stone and lead forms, caught in the midst of victory or loss. There are fountains dedicated to: the four seasons, animal fights, dragons, the story of Latona, Apollo and Neptune; each representing Louis XIV\u2019s vision of his own confidence and power.
\n
\nThe jets d\u2019eau, berceaux, nappes, cascades, grottes, bassins, gerbes, armes d\u2019eau, grilles, champignons, buffets, fontaines and th\u00e9\u00e2tres, wreaked havoc with the ch\u00e2teau\u2019s water supply. Initially, water had to be pumped from ponds and reservoirs close to the ch\u00e2teau; and in 1671, when the Grand Canal was completed, a system of windmills pumped water back into the garden, but never enough to keep the fountains in full-play. The king nevertheless demanded that every fountain be frolicking at all times, and those in view of the ch\u00e2teau danced with the dedication of Fred Astaire. Further along the garden, fountaineers would signal each other with whistles to switch fountains on and off as the king paraded through his grounds \u2013\u00a0giving the impression of life everlasting. The fountains would later be supplied by water lifted from the Seine, by the Machine de Marly, and even with the ch\u00e2teau\u2019s equivalent of austerity measures, the gardens consumed more water per day than the entire city of Paris.
\n
\n\u2026
\n
\nWhen hotelier Steve Wynn opened the Fountains of Bellagio in 1998, he described being hit by the tricksy water\u2019s spray as akin to \u201cbeing baptised\u201d; as the jets, pumps and music dignified the water \u2013 which was Louis XIV\u2019s belief \u2013 the water dignified its people. For the king and his swanky contemporaries, fountains call to mind something altogether larger, something Nicola Salvi, architect of Rome\u2019s Trevi fountain, articulated as: \u201cthe only everlasting source of continuous being\u201d. But as much as water can be coaxed, shaped and transformed, what makes it a (not actually everlasting) source of (comparatively short-lived) being is really the fact that it can\u2019t be stilled. It inspires and dissolves, it\u2019s life-giving and purifying, it spoils and drowns; its uncanny movement ungraspable and uncontainable.
\n<\/p>\n
Published in 2018 by Chateau International, with contributions from Soft Baroque and Bryony Quinn.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}