PASSAGE OF WATER
PASSAGE OF WATER. YIYUN KANG, 2023
in collaboration with NASA and Google
Offline exhibition at COP28 Dubai, UAE
ARTIST NOTE
Passage of Water is an interactive artwork that brings the changing condition of freshwater into public view. Developed during Yiyun Kang’s residency with Google Arts & Culture Lab’s Heartbeat of the Earth programme, the project responds to the climate crisis through the fragile, uneven distribution of water—the element that sustains every ecosystem and community.
Created with Google Arts & Culture and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the work draws on observations from the GRACE and SWOT satellite missions. Particularly, NASA provided Kang with exclusive access to some of the earliest data from the SWOT satellite, ahead of its public release for this project.These datasets trace changes in groundwater, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, ice, and the wider water cycle. Rather than treating this information as a remote scientific record, Passage of Water translates it into an audiovisual landscape that visitors can explore through image, interaction, and sound.
The project was launched online through Google Arts & Culture and adapted as an in-person installation for COP28 Blue Zone in Dubai. Across both formats, it asks audiences to encounter freshwater not as an abstract resource, but as a shared and vulnerable planetary system. Passage of Water is an experiment in making scientific knowledge emotionally immediate: a space in which data becomes a way to sense interdependence, responsibility, and the urgency of collective care.
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.
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Senator Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator with Yiyun Kang
at COP28 Dubai Exhibition
Luxembourg Pavilion, Dubai Expo, Dubai, UAE
December 2023
PASSAGE OF WATER Press+
COP28: Dive Into Artist’s Beautiful, Sobering Visualization Of NASA Water Data, Leslie Katz, Forbes
Passage of Water by Dr Yiyun Kang: The artist explains her approach and why she created the experiment, Google Arts & Culture
Google’s ‘A Passage of Water’ Brings NASA’s Water Data to Life, Katherine Rohloff, NASA Science
과학인가 예술인가, COP28서 물 부족 일깨운 ‘7분 매직’ : 구글·NASA 협업 강이연 카이스트 교수, 문소영 기자, 중앙선데이
나사·구글이 선택한 한국 아티스트… 미디어 아트로 기후 위기 알린다, 허윤희 기자, 조선일보
변방에서 복판으로…'K-아트' 보는 세계의 눈 달라졌다, 정수아 기자, JTBC
기후변화로 인한 담수 위기 '패시지 오브 워터' 공개, 양훼영 기자, YTN
강이연 작가, 구글&나사와 협업한 'PASSAGE OF WATER' 전시회 개최, 김나영 기자, 포춘코리아
ONLY IN THE DARK. YIYUN KANG, 2023
Site-specific Projection mapping 7 '00"
projection, audio system, LED lightings
ART ON THE MART, Chicago, Il, USA
PASSAGE OF WATER
ARTWORK BY
YIYUN KANG
In Collaboration with
Google Arts & Culture
ABOUT
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.
YIYUN KANG
Dr. Yiyun Kang is an artist, researcher and educator, working at the intersection of art and technology. Kang seeks to create works that raise critical responses to anthropocentric thinking and dualistic ontologies. Much of Kang’s work is rooted in the idea that we no longer live in an era where binary thinking leads to the linear progress of humanity.
Kang is a professor of Industrial Design, Engineering School at KAIST.
TEAM
Creative Director | Story | Research | Moving image YIYUN KANG
Data visualisation | Analysis | Web developer JEANYOON CHOI
Game developer YOUNGNAM NOH
Sound KDY + YIYUN KANG
CONTRIBUTIONS
NASA
The GRACE and GRACE Follow-On missions, a joint effort between NASA, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR, the German Aerospace Center), and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) have been tracking changes to Earth’s mass, caused by phenomena including the movement of water across the planet, since GRACE launched in 2002. GRACE-FO came online in 2018. Monitoring changes in ice sheets and glaciers, near-surface and underground water storage, the amount of water in large lakes and rivers, as well as changes in sea level and ocean currents provides an integrated view of how Earth’s water cycle and energy balance are evolving.
A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface, providing one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s freshwater bodies. SWOT provides insights into how the ocean influences climate change and how a warming world affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.
JON WALTON, Earth Public Engagement Lead, NASA JPL
PARAG VAZE, Project Manager for SWOT
FELIX LANDERER, Project Scientist for GRACE-FO
BENJAMIN HAMLINGTON, Project Liaison for SWOT
CEDRIC DAVID, Project Investigator for SWOT
GRACE and GRACE-FO Mission Partners: DLR and GFZ
SWOT Mission Partner: CNES
KAIST
HYUNGJUN KIM, Professor, Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Graduate School of Green Growth and Sustainability
NOTE
During the development of this project, the Canadian wildfires compromised one of SWOT’s main data centers, impacting the hydrology data in particular. Passage of Water, created in collaboration with the SWOT team at NASA, was also heavily impacted by the outage.
It's heartbreaking that a centre dedicated to analysing the Earth's hydrology data has been damaged by the effects of climate change.
NASA LINKS
GRACE mission website: https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/
GRACE-FO mission website: https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/
SWOT mission website: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/
NASA Images of Change: https://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change/
NASA’s Eyes on the Earth tool: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/earth
BIBLIOGRAPHY LINK : https://docs.google.com/document/d/18w9fubbHrSV5tqYjKrxJY_MaJb6v8j4XzIKG0GEYhiY/edit
DATA LINK
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LybSsfjVPkcWVb6FTv0O_GCRHjohLOp9Zug06ojma7s/edit
