momol kuo – drink up fountain

Molmol Kuo is an artist and educator whose interests range from experimental film and AR to storytelling and collective memory. The Drink Up Fountain, created in partnership with creative agencies, is my favorite project she’s worked on. This is a public water fountain that spouts out entertaining prerecorded greetings and compliments when a water drinker sips from it (creating a circuit that is broken when the drinker pulls away). This goofy fountain brings so much joy to unsuspecting people in an otherwise fairly typical urban setting and creates collective memories shared by all that engage with the public fountain.

This appreciation of joy, discovery, and sharing is found across Molmol’s work. During lockdown, she created “The Care Package”, a recipe of sorts that gave people a daily photography project that she would compile, overlay, and gift as a single print. One of her neon works combines the physical neon rods with an animated projection that seems to react to the physical rods like cars piling up on a road.