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WILLIAM R. AND ERLYN J.
GOULD DISTINGUISHED LECTURE ON
TECHNOLOGY AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE
Tenth Annual Address
Fountains: Using Technology to Create
Happiness, Joy and Pleasure
by Mark Fuller
Cha i rman and Chief Executive Officer
W E T Design
J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH .
2001
Fountains: Using Technology to Create Happiness, Joy and Peace
Mark Fuller Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
W E T Design
William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Auditorium J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah November 14, 2001
About the Gould Endowment T " TT 7 " illiam R. and Erlyn J. Gould f / f / established an endowment V W in their names in 1992 in
support of the activities conducted within the Utah Science, Engineering, and Medical Archives of the J. Willard Marriott Library.
In addition to supporting the archives, the endowment also funds the annual William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Distinguished Lecture on Technology and the Quality of Life. These annual lectures focus on technical and environmental topics, and how they relate to society as a whole.
William R. Gould, one of the world's leading engineers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs, has named the Marriott Library as repository of record for his professional and personal papers spanning more than forty years. As with many of the donors of collections housed in the Utah Science Archives, extensive oral history interviews have been conducted with Mr. Gould, as a supplement to his collection.
Through support by the Gould Endowment of the Gould Distinguished Lecture series, William and Erlyn have expressed their desire to share with the public their hope for the future: that through a more complete understanding of technology and its application, perhaps the humanity of which we are all a part may find a stronger path to greater social potential.
In their support of the Marriott Library, the Utah Science Archives, and the Gould Distinguished Lecture series, William and Erlyn Gould have established a durable marker by which we may more easily find our way.
Erlyn and William Gould
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GOULD DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
on
TECHNOLOGY A N D T H E
QUALITY OF LIFE
Mission Statement
T he William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Distinguished Lecture
on Technology and the Quality of Life was inaugurated in
October, 1992, at the University of Utah J. Willard
Marriott Library.
In establishing the lecture series, William and Erlyn Gould
both recognized the critical need for continuing public education
about issues regarding modern technology and its impact on our
daily lives.
Inherent to the advantage of technology is the importance of
understanding the ramifications and responsibilities that accom
pany modern scientific discovery. Only through continuing public
education can scientific fact and social philosophy be successfully
merged.
This lecture series is intended to provide a forum for the discus
sion of problems, issues, experiences, and successful case histories
of the regeneration and preservation of our communities through
the application of modern technology.
It is hoped that an increased awareness of obligation in the
public trust will emerge among practitioners of technology as they
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address the very important environmental and life-deteriorating
problems facing society today.
Through interaction between technologists and opinion leaders
in communities that are the benefactors of their efforts, a syner
gism can develop through which society may see great benefit in
the long-term future.
With this lecture series, it is intended that a dialogue be
opened between the technologist, the philosopher, the humanist,
the private citizen, and all who may wish to assert an active voice
in our collective future.
In such an atmosphere of mutual interest and understanding,
no one group will be singled out for exclusion or be blamed for
society's ills; rather, through understanding, discourse, and public
education the positive direction of our future may be shaped.
The Marriott Library's mission is to provide information
resources that support the scholarship, teaching, and research
programs the University of Utah offers to students, faculty, and
citizens of the state.
In this light, this annual lecture will strive toward providing a
greater public understanding of technology and the social potential
that can be cultivated.
In conjunction with the Utah Science, Engineering, and Medi
cal Archives program of the Marriott Library, this lecture series
will provide the means of bridging the many disciplines of technol
ogy while meeting the needs of the public in understanding its rich
and diverse technological heritage.
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F O U N T A I N S : U S I N G T E C H N O L O G Y T O C R E A T E H A P P I N E S S , JOY A N D PLEASURE
It is rny pleasure today to introduce our speaker, Mark Fuller, the co-founder of W E T Design of Universal City, California. I'm especially pleased to be introducing an individual who was associated here at the University of Utah as an undergraduate pursuing a Bachelor of Science Honors Degree in Engineering. Following his undergraduate work here, Mark continued his graduate studies at Stanford University where he received a Masters Degree in Engineering and Product Design. It was during these early studies that Mark began to develop the interest and knowledge necessary to set a foundation for his later accomplishments. His Honor's Degree Senior thesis focused on, and I quote: Axisymmetric Laminar Fluid Flow, or for the rest of us The Creation of an Arch of Rapidly Flowing Water That Gives the Appearance of Being Motionless. Following his training at Stanford, Mark joined the Walt Disney Company where he created and implemented more than five hundred special effects and water projects for both the Epcot Center and Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Perhaps Mark's signature project at Disney's Epcot Center is the Leapfrog Fountain, which created streams of water several feet long playfully leapfrogging from planter to planter in an orchestrated pattern. I hope some of you have seen it. It's fascinating. A Dallas commercial developer approached Mark to design a fountain for an I. M. Pei project, the result being Fountain Place.The success of this endeavor indicated to Mark the possibility of creating his own company to design such water projects. The result was W E T [Water Entertainment Technologies] Design. Through theincorporation of his engineering and design background, and ingenuity, Mark has introduced technology that allows for energy savings of eighty percent or more, and a reduction in project costs of fifty percent in high-end fountain design. Through his own creativity, Mark has found a way to combine engineering and technology to influence the quality of life, and to enhance our sense of environmental art. Our own local examples of Mark's work are the recently inaugurated Olympic Fountain on the Olympic Legacy Plaza in Gateway, and the "as yet" unveiled cauldron which is going to be the signature for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. It will be unveiled in Rice Eccles Stadium sometime in February. Mark is a most appropriate individual to be giving this year's tenth anniversary lecture of The William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Distinguished Lecture on Technology and the Quality of Life. Please join me in welcoming University of Utah alum, Mark Fuller.
/ . Bernard Machen, President, University of Utah
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Thank you Bernie. I was feeling a little nervous, as I often do before these presentations,
until the moment when you invited everybody to sit on the floor. In my company we have a
lot of conference rooms, but I frequently surprise people by sitting on the floor. I just think
better that way.
If I may, let me begin with a word frequently used in my profession's vocabulary: "saturated."
We live today in a society that is saturated with technology. Many, perhaps most, of us will
go home this afternoon and switch on something like CNN. And in the current news
we will see the demonic side of technology as it has brought forth the ability to create
weapons of mass destruction. In a non-sinister, but nevertheless pretty invasive exposure to
technology, most of us will likely be the recipients this Christmas of yet another appliance;
its front covered with a placard of buttons—each one, when pushed, revealing a spiraling
nest of menus, one of which inevitably leads to the inexorable and undecipherable error
message. In contrast, I'd like to share with you an image of what I consider to be technology
at its finest.
You don't see technology—but it's there. Technology unseen is aiding and abetting, silendy
and supportively, the simple joy of being alive. I have spent my professional life working
with one of the most common and simple, yet multifaceted substances on the planet: water—
and, with the help of technology, enticing from that water a sense of joy, entertainment, and
even amazement as it is coaxed to display its inherent properties, properties which it shields
from us everyday.
Sometimes we develop grand, exuberant displays with water. At other times in our work
with this wonderful medium of water we employ the tools of technology to make it highly
approachable and enjoyable on a very intimate, personal scale.
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These kids are playing in "high-tech" fountains. In their play they are bringing, by their
very presence, a sense of joy into spaces that technology alone would leave much less
friendly.
This is a bank plaza. The owner was seeking to transform the space in front of this bank
building into a place that would be inviting and would, therefore, become populated with
people. In this otherwise
purely commercial district,
the result of this is that
kids come from around the
neighborhood. The parents
and grandparents come to
see the kids. All enjoy the
child-play and the water-
play of the many patterns and water forms—assisted by
the unseen technology direcdy beneath.
All these valves and wonderful gizmos create the patterns
which are enjoyed by the people topside. The kids quickly
find out when to anticipate the water patterns. I guess one
of the truisms of technology is that we older folks aren't
quite as adept at guessing where technology is going to
go in the next moment.
A few years back, we were involved in a project in Lisbon.
It started as a World's Fair. It has since transformed into
the entire redevelopment of that area on the outskirts of
the city. The feature consists of a series of tile-clad towers
along a kilometer-long pool, each tower marking the
intersection of the main throughway with a cross street.
Periodically, volumes of water burst forth from the top
and shower down over each tower.
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That project demonstrated to us that the product of
this wonderful mixture of nature, the hand of man and
technology is not limited to us in this country. When we
started this project we were told, "Oh, we've seen your
pictures of kids romping in fountains. But that's you
Yankees. We are much more reserved and you won't find us
Europeans involved in that sort of thing."
At the other extreme from those very splashy and large
scale performance pieces, we find you can also incite
wonder, awe, and simple joy just with the tiniest amounts
of this precious fluid, water.
This image shows a little
marble of water that holds
this child's fascination. In
fact, for this entire fountain,
if you were to take all the
water that's in the air and
being enjoyed at any one
moment: It wouldn't fill a
soda glass.
Sometimes anticipation
is the best part, and some
times you just have to
give it a taste to complete
experience—tiiis is in
Fashion Island, Newport
Beach.
In beginning this project we
said, "Let's take the minimal
approach. Let's see what we
can achieve with the least
amount of energy, the least
amount of water—and still
bring joy to people."
For other projects that's
just not the appropriate
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direction. This is Fountain Place with the bank plaza
fountain. The goal of the architect and developer was to
turn this austere place, on the border of industrial Dallas,
into an oasis. People could come and enjoy themselves.
They would feel safe. They would find pleasure in just
being in this garden-like area. WET (along with architect,
I. M. Pei and landscape architect, Kiley Walker) designed a
tapestry of water, landscape and paving. Notice that these
three elements are all at precisely the same elevation. The
headwaters is this area of tumbling waterfalls.
Now I know I have one of the greatest proponents of the
intelligent use of electricity in our audience: the founder of
this lecture series, Mr. Gould. I suspect he may appreciate
that when we started this Fountain Place project and really
looked at it, we thought, "You know, it just would not be
responsible to use the amount of power it would take to
create the tumbling waterfalls being proposed." I mean,
the falls could be created, but we didn't feel comfortable
doing it in the traditional, energy consumptive way.
If you look closely at these falls as we finally developed
them, you will notice that as the water starts over the upper
weir at each level, there isn't a lot of water flowing. Yet a
few inches down there is the appearance of a great amount
of falling water. We did that by inventing a "flipped weir"
wherein the water pours over an edge, into a scoop, and is
flung up by its own falling kinetic energy into the water above just about to fall. With this
special configuration we entrain the water with a lot of air—and it looks very, very white
and frothy. We estimate we get a four-to-one visual multiple. That is, the look achieved is
one that would take four times as much water (and energy) to achieve with a conventional
weir approach. So we felt
good about creating the
desired experience without
just blindly incurring the
energy costs of the past
ways of doing things.
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This is winter in Dallas. We were able to capture the heat that comes from the lights and
keep this feature in operation in the cold season. There is no add-itional heat added. Look
at the sidewalk in the lower right corner of this slide. Underneath that walking surface is
all a shallow pool extending under the entire plaza. As the water spills over the weir edges,
it immediately flows into that covered pool, and from there it doesn't lose its heat through
radiance into the winter air.
I'd like now to ground
my remarks in this great
institution, the University
of Utah, by sharing several
pictures from my time here.
These show the beginning
of the laminar fluid flow
that Bernie mentioned.
"Laminar flow," simply
speaking, is what results
when you remove all of the
turbulence from flowing
water.
This is a nozzle designed to do that which I built in
my college days, with the help of the civil engineering
department's machinist in the University's shop. With
this nozzle you end up with a stream that you really might
call the water equivalent of a laser beam. Three of us, Dave
Ayer, Lee Sim and I, proposed a joint thesis project in
which we would also build what we wrote about. We
started by aiming two of these laminar streams at one
another, one up and one down, and seeing what this
collision would produce.
We then migrated to my mother's back yard, as the
un-ofhcial ofF-campus testing and development fluid
mechanics laboratory. That's a laminar stream spanning
across Mom and Dad's yard.
We had the opportunity to actually construct our thesis
project and install it in a Salt Lake City office building.This
is an illustration for that project by Ron Crosby. Ron used
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to teach in the University theater department and he designed many of the wonderful scenic
backdrops for the shows at Pioneer Memorial Theater. Ron now works on our design staff.
We built that laminar flow fountain in the Conquistador office building on 33rd South.
Years later at WET we said, "What else could we do with this laminar flow? It's kind of
fun. It's kind of weird." We found that we could, by employing the Coanda effect, support a
sphere about the size of a baseball on a stream of water, and
then cause it to rise up and down to ten, maybe fifteen feet,
all the while remaining suspended on the water column.
We found that we could cause water to appear to defy all
reason: These are two streams of water, one arcing in a
pure parabola, and the other in a sinuous curve looking
like a flailing rope. You may remember as a kid that if you
whipped on the end of a jump-rope you would get this
form. I'll tell you the rigorous technological development
that led to this: We were forming these water parabolas,
and I dumbly stepped on the hose that fed one. Pinching
it off, we got this wiggle. Well, you know, I didn't want to
spend the rest of my life at this project stepping on the
hose, so I thought, "How can we turn this happy accident
into a predictable, controllable, repeatable result?" This is
the installed result in an indoor shopping center.
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And then we said, "How about just colliding some of these
streams?" You know, it's always fun to see what happens
when things hit each other, right? And, how about
introducing light—because this very well-behaved water
phenomenon, this laminar flow, will actually conduct light
like a fiber optic cable, with the light following within the
curve of the water stream. Because of the exceptionally
precise and controllable nature of this type of flow, we
were able to impinge two of these streams in mid-air. This
causes a shower of "sparks" where the streams disintegrate
and the light bursts out. Now, that's something you can't
do with fiber optics. This
became an attraction to be
enjoyed by people in the
Carlsbad Company Store
outdoor shopping center.
Those are not neon tubes;
they are water streams
glowing and lending light
and liveliness to the plaza.
This is Crown Casino
in Melbourne, Australia,
where we employed this
internally lit laminar flow of water, and contrasted it
with vapor-like fog (almost the gaseous form of water)
to capture and revel in that fight.
At McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago,
we felt the need was to articulate water as sculpture. The
kinetics of the water allowed us to create a result that
could not be achieved if this were the glass it resembles. As
the pressures to these streams slowly change throughout
the day—sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly—the
sculpture evolves through a myriad of forms.
A highly flamboyant installation is in the Burj al Arab
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• - * - • |
Hotel, in Dubai. They claim it to be the only seven star
hotel in the world. This photo shows the grand entrance.
To the left you see an escalator leading up to the main floor.
We employed a whole collection of laminar arcs, colliding
them with each other in pairs. The streams hover above
several tons of polished, colored glass pebbles, onto
which these precision forms fall. These water arcs are all
choreographed in an elaborate visual symphony.
The only project I will share with you today that never got
built (courtesy of the Gulf
War) was destined for the
royal terminal at the King
Fahd Airport in Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia. The bottom
half of the image of this
scale model is sitting in
a reflecting pool of water.
The top half is a triangular,
monochromatic sculpture,
(which would have stood
about eight feet high in
the final installation). It
is composed of layers of
circularly polarized material not unlike that which you find in your sunglasses, or in old
cigarette wrappers made of cellophane. As light passes through this material it is partially
polarized. When you look at the reflecting pool you see this light bouncing off of the
water's surface at what is called the Brewster Angle, which causes it to be further polarized,
and you see colors imaging in the reflection. It's a bit of magic, I think. You see no color or
pattern in the actual object, but everything in its reflection.
Light is something we work with very carefully—not only how to produce it responsibly,
but how to take advantage of what is available in the environment. This is a reflecting pool
in a project of ours in California. Wha t you're seeing in that radier exuberandy lit pool are
simply the reflections of the Sam Goody neon sign hanging above. We thought, "How can
we maximize the reflectivity that naturally appears here, so that we can enjoy this free gift
of illumination?"
While those jets in that last fountain were computerized—individually, everyone of them—
this next fountain addresses technology in a very non-technical way. We are looking
straight up at a series of transparent dishes, each about seven feet in diameter, that are
suspended in an atrium in the Pinklao Center in Bangkok.
One photo is looking down, and the other is looking up
through them at the skylight above. Each of these clear
vessels slowly fills with water that is trickling down its
supporting cables. As each fills to a point, it suddenly
releases a float and a shower of water falls in a collimated
rain to the pool below. As you travel the adjacent elevators,
you see an ever changing, never repeating, series of
delightfully random rain showers. In this feature, there is
no computerization. There are no timers, no 555 circuit
chips, no pre-programmed squences—just gravity and
randomness driving the kinetics.
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The forces of nature are an inspiration to us. This is a Southern California project of
architect Arthur Erickson. That wonderful looking plaza that you see filled with water areas
and interwoven amphitheater seating is suspended over Hope Street. It was constructed as
the developer's commitment to give more open people-spaces to the city. In the upper left
corner of the image, you see a stage that looks as though it's being engulfed by a torrent of
rushing white water—sweeping down in a huge wave. And that is what is happening.
Waves are great. We go the beach, we hear the sounds waves make; we enjoy them, and we
expect to see waves at the beach. You go to a water park and see waves, and you expect to
see waves there. You don't expect to see waves in the middle of a downtown plaza. We have
found that the juxtaposition of something quite ordinary in one context into an environment
where it is not expected causes people to experience the familiar in a whole new way. One
can then expose and play with fundamental qualities in that unexpected context.
The wave in these photographs is caused by the instantaneous release of five thousand
gallons of water. The water, however, is not pumped to the top to start the downward
cascade. The structure at the back top of all those steps is a big, hollow, granite box. We
create this wave by sucking all the air out of this box. Since the box is sitting in a pool of
water, and has an open bottom, the water rises up into the evacuated space.
Remember back to your junior high school science class experiments about vacuums: The
teacher had a glass of water, and he'd tip it upside down in a bowl of water. Then he would
lift it up and the water stayed in the glass even though it was upside down and above the
water level of the bowl. But then if he broke the vacuum, by letting a little a bit of air into
the bottom of the glass, all the water rushed out. Well, this fountain is a very large version
of the water glass science experiment.
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Here is a wave of a very different kind, in a project of ours in Lisbon. The channel you see
connects seven progressively colored, tile-clad cones along this kilometer-long water feature.
When the wave that flows along the channel reaches the next tower in the series, it appears to
trigger a massive eruption of water from the tower top, which you see here. In the foreground,
you can see the wave as a huge, very clear-looking swell in the water coming toward us. This
wave is called a "soliton." It
is a non-breaking wave that
never develops a crest, and
never changes velocity as
it travels in a uniform flow
condition along this channel.
This soliton, crystal clear and
constant in motion, is a very
different type of wave from
the beach waves we are all
used to.
This is still a third type of
wave: a traveling hydraulic
jump. This came from
experiments that I remembered doing in a fluids class here on campus where we were
studying the water at the base of a dam's spillway. In this fountain, water sheets radially
outward from a disk in a high speed condition called "super critical flow." As this flowing
sheet expands, it has to spread it's energy over an ever increasing circumference. As it
expands and inevitably slows down, it reaches "sub-critical
flow." You can see the water scooting out in a thin sheet.
As it does so, it sweeps all the water in a wave ahead of it
toward the perimeter. This deeper water is held in abeyance
with no visible means of retention. So, again, we are seeing
water behavior that appears to defy our common sense.
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All of this is drawn from the memory of a lab class
demonstration. In the final fountain, the public experiences
something that we took from a lab bench experiment
and scaled it up to an architectural size. In the fountain,
we program the water pressure in that expanding and
contracting super critical water core so that it sweeps the
water inward and outward, like the closing and opening of
the iris of your eye.
Here is another set of images showing some of the crazy
things water can do. This is a mock-up that we did in our
parking lot with water spilling down a giant structure of
glass plates. I really shouldn't
say "spilling"because it never
spills. In fact, the flow is so
controlled that it adheres
to the glass and is sheeting
down first one side, and then
the other. This project is in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The entire folded glass structure slowly
extends downward, then re-folds upward, like a fanned deck of cards. All the while, of
course, the water is flowing down the glass layers,
In a different relationship between water and glass, you see water shooting up against the
underside of horizontal glass plates. Notice that the water adheres to the bottom of the
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glass as it flows outward and creates these cell-like image
patterns, which change character as the water pressure
changes.
This is a project in Jakarta with these glass plates where we
were concerned about the high winds that blow through
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this site. So we created a fountain with "water under
glass."™ See those hexagonal honeycombs in the water
patterns? They represent the equipotential force lines of
those intersecting streams.
We applied this same idea to our project in the courtyard
of the Southern California
Gas Company building.
Here are two thousand
tiny little water jets in the
exterior garden. As outdoor
channels filled with jets
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reach the building, they dive under horizontal glass covers in the floor, and continue inside
the lobby. We've brought an experience closer still: People can walk across the top of this
water and experience the patterns these water forces create underfoot.
If I asked any of you here to speculate how deep the reflecting pool in this next image is,
you'd probably say, "I don't know, maybe a foot." Well, it is whatever it takes for reflection,
which happens to be only an eighth of an inch. Part of our Firm's culture of exploring the
synthesis of design and technology is that we look for the most reductive expression of a
phenomenon. By that I mean reducing it to its bare, essential elements.
You see reflecting pools all the time. They are maybe a foot and a half deep, which probably
means you have to have a handrail, right? And so you're already keeping people away. After
all, we don't want kids falling in. Heaven knows we don't want a drowning hazard. As we
started our first project that needed surface reflection, we
asked ourselves, "How deep does the pool have to be?" And
we found the answer to be not a foot and a half; not even
a few inches: just a fraction of an inch. And such a thin
skin of water over a dark substrate gives you tremendous
reflectivity. Actually, more than in a deeper pool because
as the wind blows across only this thin "water skin,"™ the
reflection is not disturbed by ripples (which can't form in
such a shallow depth) on the surface. And, of course, it's
pretty hard to drown in this eighth of an inch of water.
This chap is walking in front of a water covered glass and
granite wall in Singapore. You can see his reflection in the
pool below. You are seeing his reflection in an eighth of an
inch of water.
I put that image in to show you a marriage we are exploring
by combining the pleasures technologv can provide with
the protection it can afford from the evils I mentioned
earlier. Imagine this attractive water wall doubling as a
barrier to provide the newlv heightened security our fives
now require. We haw been asked to work on the design
team tor the new International Monetary Fund building
in Washington, D.C. Of necessity, the facade of that
building has to be solid and bomb proof, blast proof—you
can imagine. Yet, it has to show—wants to show—and we
would like it show to all the passers-by not a fortress-like
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reminder of the evils present in today's world—but something pleasant near which to walk.
People will say, "Wow, security or not, I love being here and enjoying this."
Public places are the home for about fifty percent of our work. This is the Los Angeles Music
Center. This is home to many prominent events, often including the Academy Awards post-
awards party. As we started this project we were working with the lighting folks who were
going to put up a lot of exterior illumination. We said, "Why don't we combine two things
into one. Why don't we infuse this fountain with a level of illumination so high that it re-
radiates from the water and becomes, if you will, a 'liquid chandelier.'" And that's how it's
now enjoyed. Notice, also, that there is no open pool. The jets come from right within the
pavement. This is something which you see around the world these days. It is a concept we
pioneered and unveiled—first in our Dallas project, then here. And those are folks there in
their tuxedos, probably a little smarter than the two business guys in the earlier slide; but
nevertheless, appearing to enjoy themselves.
Sometimes we are able to use our work to meld private and public use of space.This is a river
promenade, along the Yawa River in Melbourne, Australia. In order for Lloyd Williams, the
developer, to obtain his permit to develop this property—which was to include restaurants
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and dining, a casino and hotel—he had to develop the river's edge for the city, and do it
in a way that really made it accessible and inviting to people. Additionally, he wanted to
create something that would become the "postcard shot" of his entire project. Now along
this river, as with many waterfronts, it's a darn windy place. When we were commissioned,
we considered all of these inputs, from the windy character, to the public's need, to Lloyd's
need for an icon. We created a feature comprised of eight towers which are, as vou see here,
sheathed in water. They have now become part of the background of everyday urban life for
the folks strolling along the river. We were able to keep the water on the towers—despite
the wind—with the vertical fins you see flanking each edge of the water surface. These are
not decorative elements, but they function to keep the wind from shearing the water off the
wall as it comes down.
The towers are very approachable. You can come up to
them and touch without really getting wet. And as evening
falls, we are able to become considerably more flamboyant,
for each of those thirty foot towers fires a thirty foot ring
of flame from its top .
This is one of our largest fire installations, and one on
which we arc heavily drawing for the opportunity we have
been given with the Olympic cauldron. And that's the
postcard shot we delivered to Lloyd for his project.
I cannot show you—I'm sworn to secrecy—what we are
doing for the cauldron. You may suspect by now that I'm
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a water oriented guy; so you
can look for that substance
to be involved. I look
forward to coming back to
Salt Lake at that time. • 1 ns
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For the next few minutes, I thought you might enjoy a peek behind the scenes at the design
process we go through. I'm going to whirlwind you through the process of developing The
Fountains of Bellagio. When we opened the Bellagio, Steve Wynn, who was the visionary
as well as the funding source behind creating such an amazing piece, said to me, "Mark,
I hope you take the same pleasure I do in realizing that with just machinery—with no
human performers—we are
touching the souls of the
people watching this. We
are seeing people laugh and
cry and take joy in some
t h i n g t h a t is a p roduc t ,
really, of just technology."
We worked wi th vertical
water expressions and with
motion-controlled sprays to
articulate the water's pres
ence, to introduce as much
movement and liveliness
into that water as we could.
We started this process as
we, or you, start any design
process: With sketches and
first ideas. W h a t is depicted
in these first drawings, (as is
inevitable in the design pro
cess) did not get built. Our
first designs were overly
intricate. You see all those
rings and that complexity.
As we evolved the design we found, again, that seeking the reductive idea, the essence,
would get us to the simplest, yet most powerful expressions of all: a simple sweeping arc,
and a family of circles. Then all of the performance, and all of the energy, would happen
in the fourth dimension: in the programming that would occur with time. We modeled
with a computer particle modeler to predict how the water would interact with wind and
gravity.
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,vm
We developed small physical models. And it was impor
tant for us to see how it would sit in the architecture. Then
we developed, because the contractor was rolling his eyes
at what we were suggesting, these study models of the
structure. That's a model of a piece of the support struc
ture that sits beneath the lagoon. There's a fellow standing
on the lake bottom there, and that catwalk system, and
all the white elements—they look like crayons—are about
twelve feet tall, twelve inches in diameter. They eject the
giant plumes of water that form the spine of the feature.
That catwalk system that you see there is actually below
water and rises above, at night, for servicing.
We next went to mock-up. You know, no matter how
much you think you can do with paper, pen, or 3-D com
puter models, there are some things that only being there
can reveal. And so out on that grass lot, which used to be
the Dunes Hotel golf course, we erected a piece of this
before the lake was excavated. We built a full scale mock-
up with just wood and plastic pipe versions of the jets. We
operated it by connection to the street-side fire hydrants.
Then we could ask, "Is the sight line right?" You know,
"Is the placement of everything right?" Because there cer
tainly would be no changing it once concrete was poured
in this massive lake.
This is the bottom of one of the actual, final jets. See those
cam lock holes in these base plates? We had to redevelop
a lot of equipment especially for this installation. Because
when you're down on the bottom of twelve feet of water
servicing something, you can't be undoing little screws
like you would in a nice, dry equipment room. Everything
to be serviced by divers wearing gloves in cold water had
to be just simply twisted off and on for service.
These are the jets that move and sway around, the robotic
jets which we call Oarsmen . These were built, inciden-
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tally, by a group associated with the "U" here at Research
Park: Sarcos. They were built for us here. Here's one about
to be lowered into place. There were over two hundred
Oarsmen.
This is the structure that you saw in the model. We were
asked by people walking by, "Well, when are they going to
put the trains on that track?" Everybody thought Steve was
doing an expanded model railway. This fellow is now on top
of a deck that would soon be submerged in water.
The little white dots that you see are lights. There are nearly
five thousand lights, each individually switched on and off
by computer. It would have been the easier, and certainly
cheaper way, to just build them so that the fights all turned
on when the fountain started. But by programming each
light only to be used when it's needed—although that
entailed zillions of switching elements—the actual electrical
consumption is quite small.
They tell me they use $53.00
worth of power for every
show they put on. Given
that there are between five
and ten thousand people out
there watching any given
show, I think that is fairly
remarkable.
The next few slides show
the lake partially filled.
Those of you in the audi
ence who are sort of techno-
junkies like I am, might
think, as I do, that in some
ways the machine behind
the scenes is as much of
the beauty of the art form
as that which comes forth
from the machine.
In this next series of images,
the water is rising. We cer
tified thirty-two of our
employees as scuba divers
by the time we arrived at
the final stage of this proj
ect. Everybody who was an
engineer got their scuba
certificate. Here is prior to
doing the last dry tune-up.
Here is a test of the fog.
We fill that lake with fog
in seconds. The fog is cre
ated from water atomized
at 2000 psi.
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Next you see the top of one of those jets, those large col
umns. We found by accident—well, by intentionally cre
ating an accident—by firing one of these Shooters half
full, that the instantaneous thrust wi th two hundred
pounds per square inch of compressed air pulling up on
one of those nozzles would, in fact, rip the entire device
out from the anchors embedded in the concrete lake bot
tom—which would have been a real pain to repair. So
each of those nozzles is designed to gracefully fail. It
fails first at the flange and the stainless steel curls, and
: that very lightweight shell nozzle launches itself. We
did have a problem during
testing and blew one into
the sky. But there was no
h a r m other t h a n simply
having to re-attach a new
top. So tha t was par t of
the kind of th inking that
had to go into all this. The
800 smaller nozzles that
you see are also fired by
compressed air, and they
shoot up.
The water level, by the way,
is about six inches above all
this. If you've been there
you notice nothing breaks
the surface of the lake. We
d idn ' t w a n t , aga in , the
signs of the technology to be surface. Steve Wynn wanted it to be completely hidden
and just supporting the show that we were producing. So, how do we shoot those jets up
through the surface of water? I have in front of me documentary evidence of one of the
all-time stupidest ideas that I've ever had. Those little bags that you see there. I thought
"Well, we'll just put a donut, like a life-saver, around each shooter. We'll inflate it, and
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then the jet can shoot up through the middle." We manufactured and put in over a thou
sand of those. We turned the system on, and it looked like something that the Titanic had
wished they'd had available: zillions of life-savers floating on the surface. We scrapped
all those and came up with a much simpler little tube that flips up over the top of each
nozzle, moments before the show starts. Even late in the process, sometimes you have to
retreat and redesign.
Here you can see what the
maintenance crew calls the
bat cave, leading inside into
the bowels where all of this
equipment is that supports
the show above.
This is looking down from
the hotel at that simple
layout that I mentioned
with the Shooters shoot
ing up, and the articulating
robotic jets in motion, and
the blanket of fog to add romance and to distance you from the surrounding, everyday
environment.
Those robotic jets move throughout a range of motion, from extreme to extreme, in about
a second. They move to virtually any position point, with fully controlled acceleration
and velocity.
We have a number of peo
ple on our design staff
who have backgrounds
not only in the visual arts,
but also in the perform
ing arts. They work with
us in choreographing all
of this. And for some of
the pieces we invited guest
choreographers, includ
ing Kenny Ortega who, I
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would like to mention, is
the director and really the
creator of the opening and
closing ceremonies for the
coming Olympics. Kenny
was an understudy of Gene
Kelly. H e spent h is p ro
fessional life working with
him. And so we asked him
to choreograph Singing in
the Rain as one of the open
ing pieces for this fountain.
The Fountains of Bellagio,
they tell me, are the big
gest fountains ever built in
the history of the planet.
But the bigness isn't the
important part . W i t h the
precision and the delicacy
of the water , it isn't jus t
about mechan ica l move
ments. You are oblivious to
the mechanics, and you just
enjoy the forms of the water,
and the grace, and the very
nearly unl imited configu
rations that we can achieve
because of the technology.
That is a column of Shoot
ers firing up into the air
about twenty some stories
high, all in a second or so.
There's a lot of energy that
gets released there.
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These shooters are pow
ered by compressed air.
If we built this fountain
with traditional pumps
and pipes, the pipes would
have been big enough for a
bunch of us to have joined
hands and walked through
them. If we had used
pumps, then for the maxi
mum moment when all
these jets go up, we would
have had to engineer for
that capacity. With com
pressed air, which we
store in those big tanks
like that green one you see,
we design for the average
use, instead of the maxi
mum. The size of those
compressors is only about
twenty percent of the size
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that equivalent pumps would have to had to have been if we had taken the traditional
approach.
As we stood out there enjoying all this, we wondered what it would be like to be inside
of one of those rings when it fired. I coaxed our photographer into going out there. And
we recovered this film from the bottom of the lagoon sometime later. I brought with me
maybe a couple of dozen posters of this image. So, on the way out if you'd like one, the
first of you to get them will, and any of you who don't, if you want to drop me a note at
our website, I would be happy to send you one.
I'd like to take a few minutes in case anyone has any questions. Before we do, I'd like to
acknowledge a few people in the audience. Most especially, Bill Gould. Thank you so
much for creating this opportunity for all of us, especially myself. To Dave Pershing, who
is responsible for reintroducing me to the University. I'd almost become a Southern Cali
fornia boy, educationally, and I'm clearly back a Utahn again. And to my brother Todd, and
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my sister Jamie, who were such a wonderful part of my life here before, and continue to
be. To my mother, who—so that I could get into this school and get some halfway decent
grades—worked with me in junior high school late nights trying to figure out what the
heck algebra really was all about. And to my wife, who stays up with me those same nights
now, so that I can meet the darn deadlines so that we can get these wonderful projects out
into the water. Thank you, and thank everyone else here for attending.
Question: Are you ever just a little bit embarrassed to take money for having so much
fun?
Answer: I think the one word answer to that is: "Never."
Question: Could you talk a little about maintenance?
Answer: Maintenance is clearly a central element anytime you have a lot of electro
mechanical gear. Many of our projects are outside of the States, in parts of the world
where maintenance isn't as easy to do as it is here. So we design our equipment to be
pretty darn robust. The average person who can at least service an elevator, or sharpen a
lawnmower, can pretty well take care of it. I'd say that's a curve we've progressed on from
our first installations.
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Question: It seems like you've done everything possible with water. I'm wondering though
if you still have notebooks of brand new ideas that you haven't used?
Answer: You know, every time we finish a fountain I think we've probably done everything
possible with water, including when we finished that first one about seventeen years ago.
And then, you know, you see something in the water while you are washing your driveway,
or some nuance in a puddle. I think we've designed about two hundred features. Every one
is driven by the context in which it sits. We don't have a catalog. We're not a supplier of
equipment. But we really reach into what is needed to make each project great and unique.
And so the project itself provides inspiration. And, yes, I have a notebook of all sorts of
goofy ideas that every once in awhile we're able to draw on and actually use.
Question: Do you treat the water in some way to reduce maintenance, or for some other
reasons?
Answer: We do. We treat it with a combination of bromine and ozone to keep it clean.
People inevitably get in it, whether it's maintenance people, or kids running through the
water, as you saw. And we put O R P (oxidation reduction potential) monitors on each sys
tem so that we can ensure, as much as possible, that it's pretty darn clean water.
Question: Would your company have competitors someday?
Answer: Well, to repeat my answer to Bill in a single word, "No." Or, at least that's our
wishful thinking. I think we're unique in that we pretty much started this niche, if you will,
of addressing water features from concept through to completion. Clearly, there have been
people doing fabulous fountains for thousands of years. Typically, architects design foun
tains and rely on engineers with a good background in hydraulics to implement them. We
really looked at wrapping up all of these disciplines—from the inception to the execution,
including everything in between—and drawing on so many other not-typically-fountain
disciplines; I mean choreographers, graphic designers, product designers. Jim Doyle, for
example, is working on the cauldron with me, and he has an academy award in technical
achievement. So bringing these people together, I think we stand unique.
Any other questions? Well, thank you very, very much for taking the time.
Sarah Michalak: I think, Bill, that the question has been answered. Technology does
enhance the quality of life. It does indeed. Thank you so much for coming. We'll see you
in 2002.
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The Utah Science, Engineering, and Medical Archives
The Utah Science, Engineering, and Medical Archives was established in 1985 as a part of the Special Collections Department of the J. Willard Marriott Library.
Many individuals associated with Utah have made distinguished contributions to science and its application to business and industry. These advances cover a broad spectrum of creative theoretical contributions, important experimental work, and innovative technological applications ranging from chemical reactions to cosmic rays, commercial explosives to artificial organs, computer graphics to fossil fuels, sound reproduction to space engineering, laser technology to applied ecology, and more.
The Utah Science Archives provides a rich resource for researchers exploring diverse topics in science, medicine, and technology. These include the individual contributions of distinguished scientists and entrepreneurs to group and institutional research of development projects. The complex interactions of science, technology, government, and industry are well documented.
An on-going search is being conducted to identify materials appropriate for inclusion in the archives. Many prominent Utah-related scientists and entrepreneurs have been contacted and encouraged to deposit their personal and professional papers with the program. The response has been positive, and the archives presently holds over 60 major collections, with additional collections committed.
As the archives and its funding base grows through generous private contributions, it will sponsor more special lectures, university courses, seminars, conferences, and major exhibitions. These educational programs will provide the means of bridging the many disciplines of a university campus while meeting the needs of the public in understanding its rich and diverse scientific and technological heritage.
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The Library and the University
The University of Utah Libraries include the J. Willard Marriott Library, the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, and the S. J. Quinney Law Library. These libraries collectively constitute one of the foremost research centers in the intermountain area. The Marriott Library has over two million volumes and approximately 14,000 serial subscriptions.
The Marriott Library participates in the learning and teaching ventures of the university by building collections, establishing links to an increasingly global body of knowledge, and providing users with guidance in accessing a wide range of resources. The library is a shared asset of the academic community dedicated to teaching users how to find, evaluate, and incorporate knowledge in scholarly and research endeavors. With a welcoming environment, the library ties the academic community to varied cultural and scholarly traditions.
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ADVISORY BOARD 2000-2001
William R. Gould, Chairman Emeritus, Southern California Edison Co., Rosemead, California
Floyd A. O'Neil, Chairperson, Director Emeritus, American West Center, University of Utah
Wayne R. Gould, Vice President, El Paso Power Services, Golden, Colorado
David W. Pershing, Sr. Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Utah
Rodney S. Rougelot, Retired CEO, Evans & Sutherland, Salt Lake City, Utah
J. Bernard Machen, President, University of Utah
Sarah C. Michalak, Director,]. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
Gregory C. Thompson, Assistant Director, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
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NOTES
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William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Distinguished Lecture Series
1992 William R. Gould. The Sons of Martha: Reshaping The Electric Industry.
1993 Thomas E. Everhart. Technology and Human Progress The, Information Revolution.
1994 Alan C. Ashton, A Perfect Journey": WordPerfect Helping the World Communicate.
1995 John Neerhout, Jr. The Making of the Channel Tunnel A Modern Day Wonder.
1996 Edward C. Stone. Frontiers ofSp. ace.
1997 Wayne R. Gould. Energy Eighteen Wheelers: The Technological Revolution Within Utility Restructuring.
1998 David S. Chapman. Global Warming: Just Hot Air?
1999 Thomas P. Hughes. Industrial Revolutions: From Canal Systems to Computer Networks-
2000 Christopher R. Johnson. Computer Simulation and Visualization in Medicine.
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