The Wave Organ: Can you hear the mermaids singing?

September 17, 7:05 AMSF Travel ExaminerEd Uyeshima

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Nice pipes (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)

Have you ever seen “The Incredible Mr. Limpet”? It’s a golden oldie starring Don Knotts as a shy bookkeeper who loves fish with a passion, so much so that when he falls off a Coney Island pier, he turns into a talking one. Anyway, I keep thinking I’ll hear the sushi-bound descendants of Mr. Limpet through the periscopic pipes jutting out of the masonry of the Wave Organ.

And what is the Wave Organ, you ask? It’s a wave-activated acoustic sculpture, a genuine work of environmental art created by Peter Richards and George Gonzales in 1986. Richards is now the Senior Artist-In-Residence at the nearby Exploratorium, and Gonzales is a sculptor and master stone mason. The idea for their collaboration came from artist Bill Fontana's 1976 recording of sounds emanating from a vent pipe at Kirribilli Wharf in Sydney, Australia.

After Richards received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1980, a prototype was built for the New Music ’81 Festival, but actual construction at the current site didn’t begin in earnest until September 1985. Just like a baby, it took nine months to deliver and was dedicated to the founding director of the Exploratorium, Frank Oppenheimer, who spearheaded the fundraising to make the organic sculpture a reality.

The Wave Organ (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)

It’s not easy to find the first time. If you’re coming from the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts, you need to cross Marina Blvd. at Baker Street toward the direction of the St. Francis Yacht Club. Once there, keep walking past the parking lot and onto the narrow spit of land that looks out toward Alcatraz. At the end of the jetty, you may be scratching your head trying to find it on the bayside, but there it is on the right just below foot level.

It looks like the ruins of a Greek temple but with a decidedly 20th century twist with 25 listening tubes sticking out of the granite and marble blocks. While the tubes are made of either concrete or PVC, the blocks and other stone remnants come from a long-ago cemetery demolished before the turn of the last century when the city was ridding itself of cemeteries. You can read about that particular story in my article about the Neptune Society Columbarium.

Looking like a Greek temple (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)

Listening to the sounds at the Wave Organ is quite an experience as you hear the water slapping against the stones and echoing through the tubes. High tide is apparently the best time to be here as you can hear the sea at its most active. Accompanied by a chorus of foghorns, seagulls and sea lions, the cumulative effect must be quite a symphony of natural sounds. The drawback is that high tide can occur in the middle of the night or pre-dawn. Still, you can enjoy a more subtle performance during the day as all the elements are present and accounted for.

The best spot is the “stereo booth” where you are encased by piping on three sides. Since the Wave Organ is somewhat isolated, I notice people get careless with their trash and just leave it for Good Samaritans to pick up. It’s a shameful denouement to a piece of rare art, and I’m sure Mr. Limpet wouldn’t appreciate it. Here's a recent feature about the Wave Organ from Jonathan Mumm of Sacramento's News10:

LOCATION: Past the end of Yacht Road beyond the St. Francis Yacht Club, Marina. Admission is free.