WaterBar is the first of a series of installations of Future Public Technologies that investigate the relationship between data analysis
and materiality in the public realm. WaterBar is a public water-well designed for the post-sustainability age.
WaterBar geo-engineers mineralized water. It begins with a cleaning stage via a slow anthracite filter and/or exposure
to UV light for bacteria control. The water then passes through a filter bank with select properties. These properties are real:
physically, due to their ability to impart trace elements and culturally, due to their origin and history.
WaterBar includes quartz-rich granite from Inada by Fukushima, home of the latest devastating high-tech catastrophe; sandstone from La Verna, Italy,
where St Francis cared for the poor; marble from Thassos Greece, beginning and end of democracy; and limestone from Jerusalem/Hebron, Israel,
source of eternal conflict and shared hopes.
An internet-scanning, text-processing control system continuously circulates water through these filters,
exposing them to trace elements of the minerals and rocks. An algorithm mixes these remineralized waters in proportion to the intensity of related problems
found in pertinent realtime news to a daily mineralized water mix, offered for public consumption.
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