In Between Green to Grey (2026), a new video artwork by artist-researcher Angela YT Chan, is now on display at the University of Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) as part of its 25th anniversary exhibition.
The piece is an artistic accompaniment to the Green to Grey investigation, our multi-award-winning 2025 cross-border investigation uncovering the scale and speed of nature loss across Europe. Running for three minutes, Chan’s artwork uses a layered soundscape and visual motifs drawing on the investigation’s satellite imagery, delivering an emotional, visceral interpretation of the landscape transformation we documented between 2018 and 2023.
Chan worked with the imagery through a layered process of thermal printing, scanning, collaging and digital animation. She calls the result “a speculative visual narrative that fills the gap between the ‘before and after’ evidence snapshots captured by the satellite images.”
The soundtrack is built in a similar spirit, assembling manually distorted thermal printer recordings. Throughout, Chan says, “the animation reflects on the policy decisions, industrial activity and construction processes uncovered by the journalists, the forces that have turned these landscapes from green to grey”.
Chan also wanted to employ techniques that stood in contrast to the “highly technologized”, AI-inclusive methods of the investigation itself, and the rampant nature of the so-called ‘progress’ denoted by much land development. She decided to blend analogue methods with digital animation for this reason:
As a traditionally analogue paper-based technique, collaging functions here to contrast with the highly technologized methods of AI image finding and processing that uncovered the investigation’s cases. Both approaches re-assemble and merge layers of information to connect complex narratives of change and emergency.
Also, the material process of printing on paper with heat, by burning imprints on its surface, comments on the tangible and irreversible mark making by the industries that have replaced the natural environments. As captured by the investigation, this has a deeper impact for the ecologies and people in these regions and beyond.
See it for yourself
In Between Green to Grey is part of the Knowledge in a Fractured World exhibition at the University of Cambridge, open until 11 December.
If you can’t make it to Cambridge, the full video is available to watch on YouTube:
You can read the Green to Grey investigation, including numerous publications by our partners in 11 countries, visit greentogrey.eu.