The Wave Organ: Sings the song of the Sea
By Girija Madhavan
Before I left San Francisco last year to return to Mysuru, I went for a walk on a promontory in the bay of San Francisco to the jetty that protects the Small Boat harbour in the Marina District. It was a lovely day, pelicans and other water birds were on the wing against the skyscape. To my delight, as leek sea otter bobbed in the water, weaving among the trim craft moored in the boat harbour. It was sunny but crisply cold and windy too. The straggly path was weedy and the paving uneven but the views on either side of it were breathtaking. To the left, on the broad sweep of the sea, white capped waves rolled ashore. On the horizon loomed the grim and rocky former prison of Alcatraz, while to the right, the buildings of San Francisco rose in serried ranks on their escarpments.
I was going to see the “Wave Organ”, a wondrous, wave activated acoustical sculpture, a surprise for me. But when I reached there, it was enchantment rather than surprise; a realisation of the concept of listening to the Music of the Sea, communing with Nature itself.
The Wave Organ was constructed on the shore of San Francisco Bay in 1986 by Peter Richards, the artist-in-residence of the “Exploratorium,” a premier and popular science museum of the city. The sculpture is dedicated to the memory of Frank Oppenheimer, the Founding Director of Exploratorium.
0 comments