crown fountain;millennium park

Crown Fountain, named in honor of Chicago's Crown family, was designed by Catalan conceptual artist Jaume Plensa, and is the first of its kind in the world. Transparent glass block bricks are used to build two 50-foot (15 m) towers standing at either end of a long, black granite plaza submerged under an eighth of an inch layer of water. Behind the glass bricks are high-tech LED video screens that when illuminated, scrolls through videos of the faces of nearly a thousand individual Chicagoans and showcases the vast diversity of the city while a stream of water cascades over the images. Playing on the theme of historical fountains based around gargoyles with water coming through the open mouth of the creature, each video includes specific moments where the person purses his or her lips and the fountain spews water from a point in the video display that makes it appear as though the person is spitting the water out. This phenomenon occurs roughly every five minutes.

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