“Sonata of the Stones,” by 3D artist Artur Artinian, is a stylized environment inspired by Armenia’s Symphony of Stones—not a geological replica. Artinian built its monumental forms from reference gathering, blockout, reusable basalt meshes, sculpted detail and deliberate composition, aiming for an image that felt both grounded and fantastical.
The real place behind “Sonata of the Stones”
The reference is the Symphony of Stones, also known as the Basalt Organ: a protected columnar-rock formation in the Azat River gorge in Armenia’s Kotayk Province, on the river’s right bank about 1 km northeast of Garni village. The Ministry of Economy’s site-management plan places it between 1,270 and 1,375 m above sea level. Its mapped core area is 0.9499 hectares, with a 550 m boundary. The site-management plan describes the columns as hexagonal and pentagonal, with some reaching up to 50 m; that is a maximum, not a height shared by every column.
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The plan describes the monument as a natural geological feature formed during the Quaternary. A separate 2017 geological-sciences proceedings volume identifies the exposed flow near Garni as columnar trachybasaltic andesite lava and dates it to 127 ka. It relates the polygonal prisms to slow cooling and cracking. These are attributed descriptions from different sources, not interchangeable measurements. Read the geological proceedings.
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Artinian says his inspiration came from visiting the monument and from a childhood memory of seeing it. He gathered images from the Garni region and of basalt formations more broadly, then started with simple blockout shapes to judge the silhouette and how the pillars would relate to one another. In his interview with 80 Level, he explains: “I wasn’t trying to build a perfectly realistic geological formation; I was much more interested in creating a striking image that felt grounded in reality yet fantastical.”
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Reusable forms, varied by placement
Rather than make every rock a unique asset, he developed variations from a single pillar mesh: an individual pillar, a group of three and a group of four, each at different scales. He hand-placed these forms to art-direct the overall massing. In a later passage, he describes using roughly five unique meshes. Reuse worked as an artistic constraint: changes in scale, rotation, arrangement, lighting and set dressing supplied variety without requiring a large library of distinct models.
Sculpting and material detail
Artinian sculpted a six-sided pillar and varied its faces so it could be rotated without repeating the same visible surface. For smaller elements such as candles, he describes sculpting in ZBrush, decimating the models to low-poly meshes and baking high-poly detail onto them. He says the basalt columns followed the same general high-to-low-detail approach.
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He made a tileable stone material in Substance 3D Designer, then used an RGB mask made in Substance 3D Painter to control edge wear, dirt and other surface variation. The interview tags also associate the project coverage with Unreal Engine, Marmoset Toolbag and Maya, but the described workflow does not assign each tagged application a specific task. Artinian identifies himself as a 3D artist who primarily works in real-time engines such as Unreal Engine.
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Composition that sells scale
For the camera, Artinian describes using a low viewpoint and a low focal length to make the structure feel imposing. He also divided the composition asymmetrically to balance the scene and guide attention toward a golden sun emblem and a flame gate. Those motifs belong to his fantasy interpretation; they are not features of the natural formation.
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Why the artwork is not a geological reconstruction
The distinction matters when reading the scene: it borrows the visual language of the Garni columns, but Artinian’s stated goal was mood and impact rather than a perfectly accurate geological model. The real site’s setting—an eroded gorge beside the Azat River—and its polygonal columns provide the grounding. The emblem, gate and art-directed arrangement turn that reference into a designed environment.
Columnar jointing also occurs at places such as Giant’s Causeway and Devils Postpile, but the available descriptions do not establish a quantitative ranking among sites. A useful visual comparison instead asks how regular the cross-sections appear, whether the columns form vertical curtains or horizontal and stepped exposures, how erosion and the river or canyon shape the view, and whether an artwork prioritizes geological fidelity or atmosphere.
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Protection and heritage status
Armenia’s site-management plan says ministerial decree N 274-N approved passports for the Symphony of Stones and Anonymous Cave on 18 August 2017. It treats the formation as a natural geological monument and identifies Garni community and the Khosrov Forest State Reserve’s non-commercial organization among those involved in its protection; the plan says the community operates the site.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11The combined entry “The Archaeological Complex of Garni and the ‘Basalt Organ’ Columnar Joint” appears on UNESCO’s Tentative List, with a submission date of 10 March 2025. Tentative-list status is not inscription on the World Heritage List. UNESCO’s entry places the joint in the Azat canyon, approximately 900 m southeast of the Garni archaeological complex.
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Visiting the Symphony of Stones
The site-management plan says visitor movement is mainly organized along a renovated road and identifies the nearby Anonymous Cave, Khosrov Forest State Reserve, geological formations and Garni cultural sites as part of the wider visitor setting. The Armenia Guides’ guide, updated 3 August 2026, describes a roughly 35-minute downhill walk from Garni village and warns that the return is uphill; it also characterizes the road as steep. Access arrangements and charges can change, so check current local information before setting out. See the dated visitor guide.
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