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Tech Beat: Exhibit provides flood of new uses for water
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Water is not terribly high-tech, but it doesn’t stop artists, scientists and techies from producing amazing products on display at "Surface Tension: The Future Of Water."
The interactive art exhibit is featured at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York as part of the World Science Festival.
"One of the major reasons for this is an impending crisis about water. We sometimes think issues with water shortage is just something we just see in the developing world or sub-Saharan Africa, but actually there are a lot of those issues a lot closer to home," curator Michael John Gorman said. "But this is an exhibition that’s also playful. There are lots of interactive works. There are experiments you can do with water. You can even drink water from the Hudson [River] if you're very brave."
People can get their news from TV, newspapers and mobile devices, but one of the most eye-catching displays in the exhibit shows buzzwords from the news printed as grouped droplets of water.
"It's actually printing out words in water, little water droplets, so it's like a dot-matrix printer. It's actually getting these words from live newsfeeds, so these are words that are really trending in news right now," Gorman said.
From reading water to playing water, there is the Hydro-Cordion, an accordion which uses water for sound.
"As the user, or as we call them, 'squeeze-icians' pumps his or her feet up and down on these air slippers down here. He or she propels air up these tubes and into these flutes at the top, so you hear this kind of tooting sound," Queen Mary University of London spokesperson Di Mainstone said.
Finally, the project "Hydrogeny" provides a new way to see water as the display breaks down water to show hydrogen particles, all the "Hs" in "H2O."
"When electric current goes into water, into the ocean, primordial soup is created and amino acids are synthesized, but what we are interested to observe in this installation is the dance of hydrogen," Hydrogeny spokesperson Evelina Domnitch said.
For more information on the Surface Tension exhibit, visit www.eyebeam.org.