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Can we create a vessel or indeed an 'organ' which will enable water to manifest its potential for order and metamorphosis as demonstrated in the path of vortices experiment ?
This question was framed in the context of the prevailing attitude of "making water work" where water is almost exclusively considered a transporting or energy producing medium. These applications seem entirely to ignore the infinitely subtle veil-like forms that fill a body of unadulterated water with harmonic movement. This itself appears related to a capacity for supporting living processes, through mediation of the rhythms of an environment into which an organism is by this means embedded.
This is the question Wilkes asked in 1970 when involved with his independent research in southern Germany at the invitation of Theodor Schwenk.
As a result of some experiments with a specially shaped channel through which water was encouraged to move by virtue of a gradient, it was possible to observe in one cavity, the generation of pulsing processes in the flow of water. It became increasingly evident that these pulsing rhythms were coming about due to a quite specific degree of resistance to the flow within the overall formal context of the vessel.
It has been established through extensive experimentation that the quality, dynamic and maintenance of these rhythms depends upon very subtle relationships achieved within the design of the vessel which has later in its numerous manifestations became known as the Flowform.
Path of Vortices
This phenomenon is generously illustrated in Theodor Schwenk's book 'Sensitive Chaos', ISBN 1 85584 055 3 . It is the outcome of drawing an object through water in a straight line which results generally in an asymmetrical sequence of left- and right-handed vortices, and may be called a vortical meander. It demonstrates a capacity for rhythmical order in water movement which can show a fundamental example of 'development' metamorphosis.
Specially shaped channel
This more or less symmetrical channel was created as an elongated vessel, by mirroring a meander so that adjustable walls could contain water flowing through due to the introduction of a gradient. At a certain place, oscillations were observed, due, it was eventually understood, to the correct degree of resistance which was offered.
The discovery by the John Wilkes, that resistance can lead to the generation of rhythms enabled the Flowform Method to be developed.
After a few years he devised a name for the designed product - Virbela Flowform ©.
The Flowform is a vessel that can be designed in manifold ways with single, double, threefold or fourfold cavities; symmetrical, asymmetrical or radial. It must however incorporate the correct proportions which will enable it to function in relation to gradient and flow-rate. By function is meant the generation of rhythmical vortical processes usually leading to a pulsing lemniscatory or figure-of-eight movement complex.
We are looking at the idea of 'rehabilitating' water to move , thus nurturing its regenerative ability. By encouraging it to move through a spectrum of rhythms and over a rich palette of surface qualities and movement, as the example illustrates, Nr 6b through this treatment water might be elevated again towards a nurturing of nature's wisdom filled formative processes.