Dish Vortex

One of eight works in The Serpent Garden at Alnwick Castle. Here an air-core vortex is generated within a circular stainless steel dish.  Water rises and falls within the dish in a programme of water activity.  When the system is full and flowing over the perimeter and down the sides, the top surface is comparatively flat and smooth, only broken by the vortex in the middle.  However, as the level drops, the body of water seems to take on a life of its own, increasingly rocking and swaying as its volume diminishes unaided by any outside force.  From a point where the dish is almost but not entirely empty, water is suddenly pumped in and entirely different shapes and forms develop, now more turbulent and violent until lapping over the outer edges when the mass of swirling water returns to that curiousely becalmed state.

See the video here