XD Lab | Experience Design Lab | ID KAIST
Prof. Yiyun Kang
in collaboration with NASA and Google
Artist | Creative Director | Story | Research | Moving image YIYUN KANG
Data visualisation | Analysis | Web developer JEANYOON CHOI
Passage of Water is an immersive artistic experience that interprets historical data from NASA’s GRACE satellites and new high-resolution data from NASA’s SWOT mission to illustrate how climate change is impacting Earth’s water cycle.
Passage of Water is Yiyun Kang's interactive artwork highlighting freshwater's diminishing availability and its relation with climate change. Kang spent a year from November 2022 to December 2023 as an artist in residence in the Google Arts & Culture Lab’s Heartbeat of the Earth programme, which tasks artists with addressing the climate crisis. Passage of Water is the outcome of Kang's residency programme.
Made in partnership with Google Arts & Culture and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Passage of Water uses a vast amount of datasets from two of NASA’s satellites; GRACE and SWOT. Notably, the SWOT satellite was launched in Dec 2022, and its first dataset was exclusively used for the first time in Passage of Water before being publicly released.
With cohesive storytelling alongside various techniques in data visualization, software engineering, interaction design and audio-visual production, Passage of Water presented an immersive and accessible platform for audiences to deeply engage with the global freshwater crisis, showcased across online and offline venues including the COP28 conference.
Passage of Water demonstrates a true convergence of Art and Science, illustrating how artwork incorporating scientific findings and engineering applications can come together to orchestrate an artistic experience that facilitates a public conversation on critical issues facing humanity. Thus, experiencing Passage of Water will provide the seamless integration of science and technology with art, offering a unique example of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Passage of Water web artwork was launched on the Google Arts & Culture platform on 30 November 2023. Kang then adapted the online experiment into an in-person exhibition at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) Dubai, UAE from 30 November to 12 December 2023.
© 2023 Experience Design Lab (XD Lab), Prof. Yiyun Kang