Water for Life

Water for Life

One of our biggest passion is contemporary theatre. This was one of the favorite projects where the dramatic, the emotional, and the sensual—everything that is magnetizing about theater–had space to manifest itself through the framework of…Science.

"Water for Life", an international exhibition on Water, Life, Us, was one of the main exhibition of World Expo 2008 dedicated to the theme of water and sustainability. The 10,000 sq.m. exhibition transformed Madrid architect Enrique de Teresa’s 73-meter tall vertical icon and Zaragoza's tallest building into an immersive experiential space for the public.

This highly experiential exhibition conceived for international audience, was a result of an organic collaborative design by Mona Kim and her partners of Program Collective (Program Collective is Mona Kim, Todd Palmer, Olga Subirós, and Simon Taylor of Tomato).

Challenge: How do we foster public awareness on the essence of water to life? How do help them to “fall in love” with water?

As means to achieve that, we introduced a poetic and sensual approach to the way science is communicated and experienced. Through re-crafting and shaping complex content to find an intriguing storytelling device and designing series of choreographed experiences that engaged the body, senses and emotions, scientific and sustainability messages were curated in a more accessible, visceral manner to connect all audiences.

A set of diverse, yet related, experiences were conceived with “hybrid technologies”, resulting in 17 site-specific installations that combined water, sound, light choreography, immersive media, sensorial environments, graphics, and large-scale sculptural elements that responded to the distinct and monolithic proportions of the architectural envelope. Together, the installations created unusual situations and sculptural settings of fantastical scales that, like works of art or contemporary theater, were open to public interpretation.

The project involved collaboration with leading scientists in the field, and forming of internal and external teams similar in scale to a feature film production, and 365x2 days of R&D, testing, prototyping, R&D, testing, prototyping…..

Results:
• +1 million visitors in 3 months
• International media coverage
• Popularized and immortalized by the public on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube