Week 9 - Illuminating Water

                                   Illuminating Water

Anyone else want a fountain like this is their backyard someday?  #GOALS.  Another feature of Newport Beach's Fashion Island, on the opposite side of the plaza next to Cafe R & D is a hand-carved fountain with color- changing illuminated water.



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Inspired by Rome's Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona, this fountain is beautifully lit with pink and purple hues, as well as white light to enhance the hand-sculpted fountain structure.

Mental/emotional responses to standing in the presence of this fountain and its changing light were that of mystery, magical wonder, creativity.  Invocation of dreams could occur beside this muse-like structure.  Romantic, fantasy-like emotional responses were likely to have been invoked in me, the viewer, not only because of the fountain's color palate - pink and purple light - but also because of the changes that occur within the color and water's partnership.  The fountain appeared alive, dancing, evolving, and breathing like the human spirit.

Synergy between light and water is often beautiful, not lacking in part because of the diversity in design possibilities- especially with LED lights that change color beneath the water's surface.  Light can be seen ON water and reflected FROM water.  Water can change shape and [depending on budget] lights can change color.

Referring to the fountain above, light changes occurring beneath the water's surface serve as part of a creative, coherent theme in the fountain's design, and illuminate (no pun intended) the fact that light can help bring to life different artistic mediums, as though the the material world itself inhales and exhales alongside the viewer, making the artistic expression reflexive, participatory; and in this case, awe-inspiring.