Hakuryu is a groundbreaking immersive installation that transforms satellite cloud data into music and moving image, asking a simple but radical question: what if Earth observation data could be felt as sound? Born from the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE satellite, Hakuryu is imagined as a white dragon singing a song of peace for the planet.
EarthCARE is ESA’s most advanced Earth Explorer mission to date, developed in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Designed to observe clouds and aerosols with unprecedented precision, the satellite carries a suite of instruments including the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), developed by JAXA. It was JAXA who gave EarthCARE the name Hakuryu – Japanese for White Dragon – a poetic reference that became the conceptual foundation for the installation.
Hakuryu translates more than thirty streams of EarthCARE data into an evolving audiovisual journey. Through data sonification, cloud structures are transformed into immersive soundscapes and musical compositions composed by Jamie Perera. Clouds become choirs, atmospheric processes become rhythm and texture, with voices from public figures, scientists and ESA representatives interwoven with those of people on the frontline of climate change, displacement and conflict.
Alongside sound, the same data drives a real-time visual narrative. Rain, snow, dust and smoke are rendered as rich environmental textures, forming luminous cloud trails behind a moving white dragon. Audiences travel slowly with Hakuryu, witnessing a poetic vision of Earth transitioning from day to night as it continues its orbit around the Sun.
Tekja led the development of the 3D graphics and technical infrastructure underpinning the installation. This included a post–real-time satellite visualisation grounded in real astrophysics and lighting models, as well as the end-to-end data pipeline to fetch, process, downsample and serve EarthCARE data directly from ESA systems.
The film represents a full EarthCARE orbit around the planet and was displayed at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Vienna in June 2025. Following its debut, Hakuryu continues its journey internationally in a range of installations and formats.
ClientESA / Sonic EcologyOutputLive data installationYear2025
