Streaming Machine acts as a new data center prototype using water as a media to connect online and offline activities and communities. Water extracted from the Hudson River flows through the data pillars to cool the servers and then was treated to serve public water programs such as swimming pools, hot spring SPA, indoor skiing, water therapy, and indoor deep diving. Water conditions and properties vary from program to program, creating different physiological effects to human bodies and setting up an intimate relationship between humans (bodies) and machines (servers) through water. Simultaneously the online users in the city and the on-site visitors are posing their effects on transforming the water landscape and live experience in the architecture. From the offline scale, Streaming Machine is situated on the Hudson River bank in southeast corner of Manhattan. From the online perspective, Streaming Machine is site-less and cohabited by the countless online communities in New York City. Here water becomes the interface and threshold between online and offline. Encouraging this symbiosis between online activities and in-person gatherings, the streaming machine allows people to become the creators of energy to revitalize offline gatherings after the pandemic and during the post-digital era.
