San Francisco Bay Ready to Premiere Its Musical Works

A different kind of new wave music will officially debut here Sunday.

It is music from the wind and sea lapping at the edge of San Francisco Bay.

For months, artists, engineers and construction workers have been readying the “wave organ,” a water-activated musical park along a jetty. More than 25 pipes, extending down through the jetty into the bay, resound as the waves roll in, then out.

The wave music can be subtle, soft, melodic clanking in different pitches when the water is calm or a spine-chilling chorus of whistling, gurgling noises when the water is active.

“It’s almost like sitting in the midst of a group of people speaking in foreign tongues,” said San Francisco artist Peter Richards, who conceived the idea for the wave organ several years ago. “It’s the pipes talking to you about the tide, the weather and even the moon.”

Some of the pipes, actually concrete-covered polyvinyl chloride tubes, are buried, emitting their sounds through a crack in the jetty stones. Others lie on the surface like thick, gray tree roots, weaving their way over the stones to the water’s edge.

The wave organ operates on a simple principle, like a child blowing air over the top of a soda bottle or tapping a spoon against a half-filled glass. When the water enters the pipe, a column of air becomes trapped inside, producing a resonance. When tides are high, forcing more water into the pipes, the tones take on a higher pitch.

Richards, 42, is quick to point out that the pipes are just one aspect of the project. The setting, a stone amphitheater with benches and steps that lead down to the water, is an important part of the creation.

“People hear the words wave organ , and they focus on that. This is a piece about the city, the bay and the relationship between the two,” Richards said. “I call it public art.”

“Night is one of the best times to come out here,” said artist and stonemason George Gonzales, who collaborated with Richards on the project. “In the evenings it’s real quiet on the water, but you look across at the city with all the lights and hustle, and you feel as if you’re viewing it from another time period.”

Gonzales and stonemason-artist Tomas Lipps designed and built the amphitheater with the help of several other stonemasons and three mason’s apprentices provided by the San Francisco Conservation Corps, a city-sponsored public works agency. The walkways, steps and benches are built of ornately carved stone that once adorned the streets and mausoleums of San Francisco.

When the city’s only cemetery was torn down in the early 1950s, the pieces of stone were dumped onto the jetty, adding to its length.

“Many of these pieces were worked over 150 years ago,” said Gonzales, running a hand over a curved piece of granite. “The old cemetery at the corner of Geary and Masonic was the final resting place of many of the gold barons. Some of the curved pieces you see were old curbstones from Market Street.”

The project is sponsored by the Exploratorium, a museum that emphasizes sensory experiences with science. Richards, who is an associate director in charge of the Exploratorium’s artist-in-residence program, said he will dedicate the wave organ to Frank Oppenheimer, the Exploratorium’s founding director. After construction, which began last September, is completed, the sounds of the wave organ will be piped into the Exploratorium.

Completion of Trilogy

“It’s going to complete the trilogy of our nature and art exhibit, which also includes a wind harp and a sun painting, made from the colors of refracted light,” Richards said.

Richards has worked with water and light sculpture for a decade. Several years ago he teamed up with another Bay Area artist to create “floating light sculptures”--strings of chemical lights that floated on the surface of the bay. “They were really celebrations of a sort,” he said.

To build a permanent piece of artwork like the wave organ, Richards had to obtain permission from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers, the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which owns the property.

Funding for the wave organ came from a combination of grants, private donations and funds raised for the Exploratorium’s artist-in-residence program.

Although Richards declined to say how much it cost to build the wave organ, Gonzales said, “It cost as much as a bathroom in the Marina District,” one of the more expensive and fashionable San Francisco neighborhoods.