Be Water
Obvious, 2025
Movement-to-video algorithms (OnlyFlow)
“Be Water” is an immersive video installation that tells the story of the water cycle through a poetic reinterpretation of its movement in all states — liquid, vapor, ice. This oniric journey draws inspiration from the natural elements that rely on water to exist, inviting the viewer to lose themselves in the flow of forms, textures, and rhythms — until they, too, become water.
The original piece is meant to be displayed on a immersive space with a floor and three walls. Each wall of the piece was generated through a separate training of an AI model, and yet, the coherence of the experience is ensured by the motion itself — a unifying visual thread that seamlessly travels from one surface to the next. The artwork is generated using OnlyFlow, a novel AI technique developed by Obvious and presented at CVPR CVEU Workshop 2025, which allows the movement from an input video to shape the motion of the generated video in harmony with a given text prompt. For the CVPR 2025 AI Art gallery, we present the floor of the artwork, since we get access to one screen.
This technique enables a unique control over the choreography of pixels, allowing the artists to “sculpt” motion. The resulting work becomes a visual celebration of water — the element that connects all living beings, and is connected through a myriad of movements.
By intertwining cutting-edge research and visual work, “Be Water” exemplifies Obvious’s mission: to fuse art and science in a new language of creation.
About Obvious
Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and visual art. They made, in 2018, the historic sale of an AI-generated portrait at Christie’s New York — the first of its kind. Their work, blending classical aesthetic codes with the most advanced algorithms, has since been exhibited in major museums worldwide. Represented by the Danysz Gallery, Obvious is known for pushing the boundaries of digital art.
Pioneers of the NFT scene in France and collaborators with institutions such as Nike, Alpine, and the Opéra de Paris, Obvious works to democratize the creative potential of AI across industries. In 2023, they founded their own research lab in partnership with Sorbonne University, aiming to develop new open-source AI tools for artistic creation.
In 2024, they partnered with the Paris Brain Institute for the Imagine project, using AI and MRI data to visually reconstruct human imagination. This project led to a scientific publication and exhibitions in Paris and Seoul.