Thirsty Algorithms

2026

Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism &
Civic Data Design Lab 

Sarah Williams (Director)
Ata Chokhachian (Project Manager)
Ashley Louie
Maria Gabriela Carucci
Maysaa Sati
Berit Lavender
Yufeng Zhao
Sofia Medina
Gonzalo Portas

Technical Artist
Lake Heckaman

Overview

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly familiar part of everyday life, embedded in how we work, communicate, search, create, and make decisions. Yet behind these seemingly effortless digital interactions lies a vast physical infrastructure of data centers that requires significant amounts of energy and water to operate. Much of this infrastructure remains out of sight, with limited transparency about how facilities are operated, cooled, and supplied with resources.

Data centers operate continuously, housing thousands of servers that generate substantial amounts of heat as they process and store information. Managing this heat requires cooling systems that rely on different combinations of water and electricity. Evaporative cooling uses water to dissipate heat through evaporation, while air cooling relies on fans and air circulation, reducing direct water consumption but potentially increasing electricity demand. Closed-loop cooling systems circulate water repeatedly, minimizing the need for continuous water replacement. Each approach carries different environmental implications depending on the facility's location, climate, energy sources, and surrounding water availability.

The water footprint of artificial intelligence therefore extends beyond the water consumed directly within a data center. It also includes indirect water use associated with electricity generation. While the water required for a single AI interaction may appear insignificant, millions of interactions accumulate within an infrastructure that operates around the clock. As the number and scale of data centers continue to grow, so do questions about the resources required to sustain them and the communities and environments affected by their expansion.

Created for OCCUPANCY, the inaugural exhibition at MIT's MET Warehouse, Thirsty Algorithms seeks to make these often-invisible processes visible through an interactive installation that combines data visualization, motion sensors, a physical input interface, a command-line-inspired information display, and a thermal receipt printer.


At the center of the installation is a large projected water tank, conceived as an extension of the gallery space; a kind of white-tiled backroom that reveals the hidden infrastructure supporting our everyday digital interactions. The tank creates the illusion of a physical space beyond the gallery walls, providing an architectural reference through which otherwise abstract quantities of water can be understood. Water particles fall from its tiled ceiling and accumulate in a pool below, gradually occupying the space. At the scale of the MET Warehouse, approximately 3:26 seconds of water withdrawals by operating AI data centers across the United States would be enough to fill the entire building, based on the project's estimates. The visualization draws on a dataset of 819 operating and planned AI data centers across the United States, translating their geographic locations, cooling technologies, water consumption, and local water-stress conditions into a continuously evolving spatial experience.

In its ambient state, the installation moves from data centers operating today toward those planned for the future. Facilities appear in sequences organized by the water stress of their locations, revealing how the same quantity of water can have very different environmental implications depending on where it is consumed. Different colors distinguish direct and indirect water use, while variations in particle density and movement communicate the scale and intensity of resource consumption.



Visitors can also interact with the installation through a twelve-button keyboard, selecting an AI task, text, image, video, or a combination of all three, and one of three cooling technologies: evaporative, air, or closed-loop. Each selection triggers a sequence that begins with the estimated water footprint of an individual prompt and progressively scales up to collective patterns of use, from a single AI user to the MIT community, Cambridge, and Greater Boston. As the number of interactions increases, water accumulates within the projected tank, making the relationship between individual digital actions and collective resource demands tangible.


Each cooling technology is represented through a distinct visual language within the tank, translating the physical processes of heat dissipation and water circulation into different forms of movement and accumulation. The installation's motion sensors allow visitors to interact with these processes through their own bodies, with each cooling system responding differently to their presence.

Air cooling manifests as a field of bicolored particles representing cool and warm air circulating through space. As water use increases, the particles become progressively denser, revealing the growing resource demands associated with this cooling process. The particles are attracted to the audience's presence, concentrating around their silhouettes and forming denser clouds wherever visitors position themselves in front of the screen.


Evaporative cooling appears as condensation accumulating across the surface of the projected tank. As time passes and water consumption increases, droplets multiply exponentially, gradually merging into larger formations that eventually descend as rivulets of water. Visitors can interact with this condensation through their body movements, temporarily wiping away the accumulated droplets as though clearing a fogged mirror. The condensation continues to build, reinforcing the ongoing nature of the cooling process.



Closed-loop cooling is represented through a more contained body of water, whose behavior takes on an artificially viscous quality. Referencing the processes of demineralization and temperature change that water undergoes as it circulates through cooling infrastructure, the visualization transforms water into a seemingly synthetic substance. Globules of water continuously merge and separate in an irregular cycle, bouncing against the floor, walls, and ceiling of the tiled tank. The audience's movements disrupt this circulation, causing the globules to move more chaotically throughout the space. This behavior gives physical expression to the engineered nature of water circulation within closed-loop systems.



A command-line-inspired display accompanies the visualization, providing information about the data centers, their locations, cooling systems, water use, and environmental conditions. At the end of the interaction, visitors can print a physical receipt that extends the narrative beyond the projected space. The receipt brings together three scales of analysis: the water footprint of individual AI tasks and their collective use; the infrastructure and environmental conditions of a selected data center; and the broader expansion of data-center infrastructure and projected water withdrawals across the United States.


Through these overlapping scales, Thirsty Algorithms explores the relationship between individual digital interactions and the physical infrastructure that sustains them. The installation raises questions about the geography of resource consumption, the environmental consequences of different cooling technologies, and the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure in regions already facing water stress.

Ultimately, the project asks what greater transparency around the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence might look like. What if every AI interaction came with an infrastructure receipt? What information should be made available about where our prompts are processed, how the facilities are cooled, and the resources they consume? By translating these questions into a spatial and interactive experience, Thirsty Algorithms invites visitors to reconsider the material consequences of an increasingly digital world.

Press
︎︎︎ Occupancy, SA+P Events. 10/2026