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 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer WET 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 WET 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, En­ gineering, 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 environ­ mental topics, and how they relate to society as a whole. William R. Gould, one of the world's leading engineers, business­ Erlyn and William Gould men, 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 estab­ lished a durable marker by which we may more easily find our way.

BO GOULD DISTINGUISHED LECTURE on TECHNOLOGY AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE Mission Statement

he William R. and Erlyn J. Gould Distinguished Lecture T 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

BO 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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FOUNTAINS: USING TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE HAPPINESS, JOY AND PLEASURE It is rny pleasure today to introduce our speaker, Mark Fuller, the co-founder of WET 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 WET [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

BO 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 ofjoy , 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. BO H -ft" -•"•''"' i fl1 r% ,

j> .4 '.. 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.

BO 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

BO 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.

BO 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

BO 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.

BO 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. What 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. BO 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.

BO 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.

BO 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 i o..4ifi^B 1H ' AK — 3^K^I Hm- fcr..cJ ^ M K& I ' "I. ! |B^ '"** —• -i ^^^ ~-». ^•fcii - *f»JLi «K ™ r HI m. j-*' T- • • X »

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1 V r J 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 JMIJ <• » M « m channels filled with jets

BO 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

BO 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

BO 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

BO 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 thing that is a product, really, of just technology." We worked with 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. What is depicted in these first drawings, (as is inevitable in the design pro­ cess) did not get built. Our ,vm 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. BO 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-

BO 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.

BO 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 with 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 harm other than simply having to re-attach a new top. So that was part of the kind of thinking 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 didn't want, again, 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

BO 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

BO 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. He spent his pro­ 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. With the precision and the delicacy of the water, it isn't just about mechanical move­ ments. You are oblivious to the mechanics, and you just enjoy the forms of the water, and the grace, and the very nearly unlimited 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.

BO 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

BO 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

BO 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. BO 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 ORP (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.

BO The Utah Science, Engineering, and Medical Archives

The Utah Science, Engineering, and Medical Archives was estab­ lished 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 contri­ butions, 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 in­ clude the individual contributions of distinguished scientists and entre­ preneurs 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 appro­ priate for inclusion in the archives. Many prominent Utah-related scien­ tists 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 collec­ tions, 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 pro­ grams will provide the means of bridging the many disciplines of a uni­ versity campus while meeting the needs of the public in understanding its rich and diverse scientific and technological heritage.

BO The Library and the University

The University of Utah Libraries include the J. Willard Marri­ ott 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 li­ brary ties the academic community to varied cultural and scholarly traditions.

BO 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

BO NOTES

BO

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.

BO