Wave Rings

Wave Rings (Fig. 4) is an interactive structure using water for communication in a public place. Participants communicate with each other by way of rings produced in water and by using sounds, instead of language, as the medium of communication.

In the past, wells, springs and other such sites served as public gathering places in Japan. Local inhabitants came to draw water and, at the same time, to speak of daily life. But starting in the 17th century, modern water delivery systems became common in Japanese cities. As more and more homes had running water, inhabitants of these cities no longer had to go to public places to get water.

In Europe, the practical uses of fountains have disappeared, but many are preserved for aesthetic reasons—they are objects whose purpose is to be admired. But in Japan, since public water supplies never had an aesthetic role, they gradually disappeared in most cities. This is why, during the Meiji period (around 1870), the Japanese government decided to import the fountain concept from Europe. European fountains introduced new ways to use water and new decorative designs heretofore unknown in Japan. We Japanese tended to appreciate water in private spaces, for example in gardens, and designs tended to imitate nature. For example, water ran naturally downstream and never sprang vertically toward the sky.

Fig. 4.

Nodoka Ui, Wave Rings, metal, water, speakers, infrared sensor, 1998. (left) In a pool, 150 cm in diameter, eight speakers, each 20 cm in diameter, are submerged, with speakers equidistant from one another and butted against the enclosing well of the pool. The pool is filled with water until the top surface of each speaker is under 1 cm of water. (right) When a person approaches or passes the pool, the nearest sensor will trigger a speaker to make a musical sound. When sound emits from the speaker, the vibration from the speaker transforms the movement of the water; tiny columns of water flow and wave rings appear on the surface.

©Nodoka Ui. Photo ©Emi Noro. Programming: Kohji Setoh

Fountain designs vary in today's Japanese cities, just as in many other countries. Yet the original ideas and the concept of the fountain were never well understood—European forms were copied and fountains continued to be built, but most fountains have no underlying concept, no particular reason to be where they are. Consequently, the relationship between the Japanese people and public water spaces has become more and more tenuous.

Wave Rings is meant to make participants think about the original function of water in a public place, to highlight its dimension of communication, and to make Japanese people think about the role of fountains and their own relationship to water. In an eight-footed basin (150 cm in diameter and 70 cm in height), eight loudspeakers are submerged at equal distances. There are eight infrared receptors, one at each foot of the basin, each receptor being connected to the adjacent speaker. When someone approaches, the nearest infrared receptor sets off an underwater sound facing the viewer, and at once waves spread out in concentric rings at the surface of the water. If only one person approaches, the sound and rings are produced by a single source, but if several persons come close at nearly the same time, several loudspeakers produce sounds, and kaleidoscopic water patterns criss-cross at the surface of the basin.