How Will We Breathe Tomorrow? (original) (raw)
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Data intimacies: Building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution
Sociological Review, 2019
The air is, in many urban contexts, polluted. Governments and institutions monitor particles and gas concentrations to better understand how they perform in the light of air quality guidance and legislation, and to make predictions in terms of future environmental health targets. The visibility of these data is considered crucial for citizens to manage their own health, and a proliferation of new informational forms and apps have been created to achieve this. And yet, beyond everyday decisions (when to use a mask or when to do sports outdoors), it is not clear whether current methods of engaging citizens produce behavioural change or stronger citizen engagement with air pollution. Drawing on the design, construction and ethnography of an urban infrastructure to measure, make visible and remediate particulate matter (PM2.5) through a water vapour cloud that we installed at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, we examined the effects and affects of producing a public space that allows for physical interaction with data. In Yellow Dust, data from PM2.5 were translated into mist, the density of which was responsive to the number of particles suspended in the air. Data were made sense/ible by the changing conditions of the air surrounding the infrastructure, which can be experienced in embodied, collective and relational ways: what we call 'molecular intimacies'. By reflecting on how the infrastructure facilitated new modes of sensing data, we consider how 'data intimacies' can re-specify action by producing different forms of engagement with air pollution.
The Timestreams Platform: Artist Mediated Participatory Sensing for Environmental Discourse
Ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques have been used to inform discourses around climate change and energy insecurity, traditionally through data capture and representation for scientists, policy makers and the public. Research into reengaging the public with sustainability and climate change issues reveals the significance of emotional and personal engagement alongside locally meaningful, globally-relevant and data-informed climate messaging for the public. New ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques are emerging to support the next generation of climate change stakeholders, including artists, community practitioners, educators and data hackers, to create scientific data responsive artworks and performances. Grounded in our experiences of community based artistic interventions, we explore the design and deployments of the Timestreams platform, demonstrating usages of ubiquitous and pervasive computing within these new forms of discourse around climate change and energy insecurity.
Wellcome Open Research
In this reflective paper we outline and discuss our art-based Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) approach. This exercise held two broad objectives. Firstly, to assist policy makers in understanding the types of interventions communities will find acceptable to address the problem of poor air quality, and secondly, to ascertain community views about our research plans to explore the impact of the planned interventions on neighbourhoods. We reflect on both our approach and the emergent conversations from the PPI activity. Attendees contributed to the process and stressed the importance of not burdening poor neighbourhoods with costly charges as that would ameliorate one health problem but generate others as a consequence of additional financial burden. Equally, they stressed the need to conduct research on matters which they could connect with such as the impact of clean air plans on young children and how information about air pollution is disseminated in their neighbourhoods a...
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2021
In this paper, we investigate five activist-artistic approaches to argue for a sensory politics of the Anthropocene. Our aim is to highlight the affective and speculative potentials of art by examining how artists engage with the senses to make air pollution and its political implications visible, tangible, or otherwise experiential. The paper touches on widerreaching discourses on the politics of sensing, sensible politics, and sensory studies. Rather than situating air pollution within a policy framework, such as that of the international sustainable development goals, we locate our arguments within recent scholarship on postpolitics and the Anthropocene. Despite its episte-mological slipperiness, we consider the Anthropocene to be a potent heuristic as well as a rich resource of ideas, data, and collaborative and antagonistic potential for artists working on issues of air pollution. The five case studies are each grounded in an explicit engagement with at least one of the five basic senses and include works Laboratories (NL). Clustered into three lines of argumentation, we demonstrate the ways in which these works contribute to the politicization of air: first, by framing air as a contested common good that problematizes the commodification of clean air; second, by integrating artistic research and environmental communication strategies; and third, by providing sensory experiences of the complicated constellations of agency and perception in the interscalar phenomenon of air pollution. Although our analysis is not exhaustive, three particularities could be identified in the works: an openness to other forms of knowledge and communication; a potent critique of the Anthropocene; and a radical questioning of 'the political'. In conclusion, we argue that art can mobilize a sense of urgency and empowerment towards a multi-sensory politics of the Anthropocene.
New Media & Society
An increasing number of low-cost and do-it-yourself (DIY) digital sensors for monitoring air quality are now in circulation. DIY technologies attempt to democratize environmental practices such as air quality sensing that might ordinarily be the domain of expert scientists. But in the process of setting up and using DIY sensors, citizens encounter just as many challenges for ensuring the accuracy of their devices and the validity of their data. In this article, we look specifically at the infrastructures and practices of DIY digital sensing. Through an analysis of urban sensing in London as an environmental media practice, we consider the specific techniques and challenges of calibrating DIY digital sensors for measuring air pollution to ensure the relative accuracy and validity of data. We ask, "How are DIY calibration practices expressive of particular political subjects and environmental relations-and not others?" "How might we re-calibrate DIY as a digital practice and political commitment through engagements with multiple genealogies and counter-genealogies of citizen-led inquiry?"
Participatory Action for Citizens' Engagement to Develop a Pro-Environmental Research Application
Cornell University - arXiv, 2022
To understand and begin to address the challenge of air pollution in Europe we conducted participatory research, art and design activities with the residents of one of the areas most affected by smog in Poland. The participatory research events, described in detail in this article, centered around the theme of ecology and served to design an application that would allow us to conduct field research on pro-environmental behaviours at a larger scale. As a result we developed a research application, rooted in local culture and history and place attachment, which makes use of gamification techniques. The application gathers air quality data from the densest network of air pollution sensors in Europe, thereby aligning the visible signs of pollution in the app with the local sensor data. At the same time it reinforces the users' pro-environmental habits and exposes them to educational messages about air quality and the environment. The data gathered with this application will validate the efficacy of this kind of an intervention in addressing residents' smogcausing behaviours.
Pollution Pods: can art change people's perception of climate change and air pollution?
Field Actions Science Reports, 2020
The artwork Pollution Pods is part of the Climart project, a wider research program that looks to explore the ways in which art can change people's perception of climate change. Before presenting the Pollution Pods project itself, Michael Pinsky describes his process of artistic creation and explains how his work engages with the challenge of "representing the invisible". The conception of Pollution Pods is part of a scientific work studying the type of reaction that climate art can bring about in audiences, thinking specifically about the extent to which artworks lead people not only to reflect on the reality of their daily lives, but also to alter their behaviour.With Pollution Pods, the artist hopes to disrupt our embodied experience of pollution, which is generally that of a background phenomenon to which we grow accustomed. To do this, five geodesic domes, five closed physical spaces containing toxic air from different cities around the world, are connected, forci...
Designing Interactive Systems Conference
The Air Quality Index (AQI) is a set of numerical, color-coded metrics used to communicate air pollution levels. AQI data is available through a variety of mediums such as mobile apps, websites and public displays. However, the information communicated through these may not be easily interpretable to everyone. Especially when scientifc data and associated representations are used to convey information to communities whose shared knowledge and practices are signifcantly diferent from Western scientifc contexts. We discuss fndings from a qualitative study conducted in Delhi, India to understand how residents across both low-and high-resourced communities, assess their personal risk around air pollution and the safety measures they take to mitigate that risk. We reveal incompatibilities between the air-quality information displayed in digital platforms and whether that information is interpretable for people with diferent cultural sensitivities. We conclude with design implications for improving the interpretability and relevance of air quality interfaces. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); Empirical studies in HCI; Field studies.
Design for Change: Digital Tools and Games for a Sustainable Future
ACSA Conference Proceedings 110, 2022
The Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment described pressing issues facing cities and people related to climate change, threatening human health, ecological systems, infrastructure, agriculture, and increased storm events.1 However, the report concludes by stating that while many impacts of climate change are unavoidable, much is still largely determined by our collective actions. The collaborative project Design for Change: Digital Tools and Games for a Sustainable Future is an transdisciplinary research project based on the belief that game-play and game-design are not only powerful ways to learn, but they also have the great potential to bring people together to share an experience that can impact them in significant ways. The project seeks to reframe problems related to environmental health as an opportunity for design innovation and community engagement, with the goal of building knowledge, generating collective optimism, and developing actionable solutions. Design for Change involves the development of climate change games by students of various education levels. The research question asks how can a pedagogy applying design and game-play to help students better understand urban complexities and propose solutions related to the effects of climate change on the built environment? The collaborative research directly addresses the need for new approaches to educational practices and methods through the development of digital tools and game design based interactive learning to create a more engaging platform to learn about sustainability. This project combines the expertise of Dr. Renee Jackson, Assistant Professor of Art Education & Community Arts Practices, whose research is focused on learning about social justice through game-design and integrating games into curriculum and Gabriel Kaprielian, Assistant Professor of Architecture, whose research is on climate change adaptation of the urban environment.