1. This can be pretty difficult depending on how far you want to go/ how realistic the end result should be.
there are 2 options i think, you can buy a plugin like glue3d, or maybe try a trial version, not if that's available. A more expensive but accurate solution would be realflow (4), but that's not integrated into max.
Using one of the 2 mentioned above it should be fairly simple because the calculations will be handled by the plugin/software.
Another option would be to try particle flow, i won't go in detail here, a general outline should help, and there are more tutorials for particle flow included with max.
Create a deflector on the water surface, then you can use a colission operator within PF (particle flow) that will spam new particles when the drops collide with the water surface. Those new particles should have the shape of the ripples, once you have that you can render them from the top view into .avi for example, and then use this animated material as a bump, or more realistic displacement map to show the ripples.
Although it may be a bit tricky, it's certainly possible using this technique.
2. there are many ways to make something look abstract. to change the shape use editable poly, if you want to cut out object you can try booleans. To smooth objects use turbosmooth, and if you want objects distributed on other objects you could try 'greebles' , particles, or the scatter modifier.
Other modifiers that can help you adjust your model are, bend, twist, noise, all the names are pretty self explanatory. You should really just experiment with that yourself, have fun!
btw, welcome to the community.