is a multimedia installation developed by Rae Hsu, during their Mensch Maschine residency in 2024. The installation contrasts ancient weaving techniques with water technologies in addition to financial and computational infrastructures, to develop a composite of natural, mechanical and human technologies. Exterior to the space is Hsu’s „The Empathy Machine“, concealed behind a tapestry designed and created by the artist on a Jacquard loom, which is considered to be the first programmable machine and an early ancestor of the computer. The Empathy Machine is a large language model built by the artist, designed to privilege difference over sameness in how it categorizes the world. Visitors that engage with the chatbot are invited to explore the limits of language and logic, while reflecting on the hidden water consumption of each interaction.



The fountain centralized in the space, is a continuous stream of water, which weaves and drips with similar technology to the ancient craft of tapestry, displayed at the entrance to the space. The serpentine and quartz at its center points to the mineral extractivism embedded in the infrastructures of AI, from silicon wafers to rare earth materials. The water’s flow rate directly responds to real-time waves of volatility in NVIDIA’s stock price. This occurs through the operation of a microcontroller inherent to the clay plinth, which ties the flow of water to today’s markets and the corporations that stand for its dominance in the global AI thirst. Sometimes the water will flow rapidly, at other times quietly in direct response to the volatility of global financial markets, responding to socio-political change and the polycrisis.

When visitors press their ears to the clay plinth, they enter a generative soundscape: a meditation on liquidity, calculation, empathy, and wealth. This soundscape was co-developed by the artist with The Empathy Machine, creating a collaboration between human and machine for artistic purpose. In this sense, AI is a function of liquidity in relation to capital, computation, and water. Financial speculation promotes the expansion of AI, while fresh water cools server farms and ultra-pure water cleans silicon wafers, which serve as the basic material for the manufacture of electronic components such as integrated circuits (chips) and solar cells. While the water runs: What stories emerge when the rather abstract system of profit meet the material costs of the thirst for AI?