The ‘Tides of the Mind’ is a 22 foot high water wall featuring the titles of Albertus Magnus’ books. The secular texts on science and philosophy have been set in capital letters. They are contrasted by the flowing cascade of the sacred texts on Christian themes. The water wall is lit by high-powered flourescent tubing, the light from which catches the etched letter forms, creating a dazzling display in the evening.

Behind the falling water, the water wall is an an ambient information appliance, the ebbs and flows of which are based on real-time tidal data pulled from the internet. The tidal synchrony software I wrote for this project expresses the spirit of Albertus Magnus, who is considered one of the fathers of natural science. It invites the natural world into the world of human artifice as represented by the enclosed courtyard.

The ‘Light of the Mind’ is a calendar written into the tiles of the inner courtyard. The twelve tiles in the calendar, one for each month, feature dates from the college’s Dominican origins, such as the Feast of Albertus the Great on November 15th, and other significant milestones for the college.

The tiles use symbology from ancient and contemporary sources. The tile in the foreground represents, with an unbroken circle, the Feast of St. Catherine on April 29th. The tile immediately behind it commorates the date May 9, 2004 when over 10,000 degrees had been awarded. It is an abstracted Roman numeral.