Private Fountains

Original Setup

Private Fountains are individual designed little fountains, installed in plastic buckets, which are meant to supply private refreshment, joy and entertainment. Originally, the fountains were powered by three electric water mills, which were mounted at the fountain in the Zuidpark in Ghent. The big fountain in the park provided the power which drove the small fountains and the small fountains were rented out to visitors of the park for a fee of 10 Cents / 10 minutes or 1 Euro / hour. (We encouraged short term rental cycles as the entertainment quality of each fountain decreases after about ten minutes of continuousperception. Furthermore, we had an interest in making the fountains accessible to as many people as possible while we only had a stock of three different fountains available.) The original rental service took place on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 in the Zuidpark in Ghent.

As the water mills and generators were designed for the particular fountain in Ghent's Zuidpark, it will make sense to run the little fountains when they are used at other locations with different power sources. The voltage, which is required to drive the little fountains is indicated at the power cable of each fountain.

Future use of the fountains:

The fountains have to be used and displayed as often as possible. Not only within exhibitions, but in any situation where Timelab thinks it is appropriate to use and display them.

Project outline:

"The fountain in the Zuidpark is a very nice gift from the Ghent city council to the public. It provides a refreshing ambience on hot Summer days to people which spend their time in the park. But the fountain is also quite a big system - and the service that it provides is very general and not individual at all. It accesses all people at the same time in the same way. For me, it is comparable to something like an old style TV-station. It broadcasts continously its one program and you as the viewer only can decide either to view it or not. But you don't have any further choice about the quality of the program. In an age, where we can all generate, remix and transmit individual programs via various technologies, big general systems like this fountain seem a bit "last century"-fashioned.

In my project, I'd like to tap the fountain. Via water-wheels, I want to use it as a source for low power electric energy. This energy will drive a set of little fountains, all designed different, and all mounted inside different plastic buckets. Those little fountains will be rented out to the people which spend their leisure time in the park. The little individual fountains are all connected with long cables to the power generating water wheel in the big fountain. The small fountains are mobile and they can be distributed inside the whole park. So if a couple of friends decides to sit 50 metres away of the big fountain, they can have their own little fountain in the middle of their group. For entertainment and refreshment."

Niklas Roy and Jari Suominen were participants of Summercamp Electrified 2010. Their project ‘Private Fountains’ is part of the timelab Collection.