The Fountain is an interactive installation that explores the hidden link between two vital resources: water and data. As AI continues to proliferate, so too does its physical demand on the environment, particularly water, which is used in massive quantities to cool server farms powering generative technologies. In this piece, participants are invited to choose between drinking from the fountain or pouring water into a sculptural server, triggering the generation of AI imagery and immersive, AI-modeled sounds of a distorted natural world.

By foregrounding water as both a physical and symbolic resource, The Fountain reveals the often invisible environmental costs of digital creation. The experience underscores a key paradox: that technologies designed to simulate nature increasingly rely on the depletion of the very ecosystems they attempt to mimic. The work draws on real-world data, such as the fact that generating a single AI image can consume up to 27 milliliters of water through server cooling processes, to invite deeper awareness of the infrastructure behind digital life.

Sound and visuals were generated through a combination of generative AI and real-time processing: spatial soundscapes of nature were built using RAVE AI, while visuals were created using a custom pipeline between ComfyUI and TouchDesigner. Both elements respond dynamically to user interaction, immersing participants in a world where organic textures are shaped by technological consumption.