Data intimacies: Building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution

Abstract

The air is, in many urban contexts, polluted. Governments and institutions monitor particles and gas concentrations to better understand how they perform in light of air quality guidance and legislation, and to make predictions in terms of future environmental health targets. The visibility of this 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 examine the effects and affects of producing a public space that allows for physical interaction with data. In Yellow Dust (YD), data of PM2.5 are translated into mist, the density of the mist responsive to the number of particles suspended in the air. Data are made sense/ible in 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.

Assessing the Influence of Socioeconomic Status and Air Pollution Levels on the Public Perception of Local Air Quality in a Mexico-US Border City

“…Other authors [ 29 , 65 ] postulated that when studying the built environment, individual-level socioeconomic factors are more affordable predictors of air quality perception than objective measurements from monitoring stations. Usually, air quality data is not widely disseminated, and it is not straightforward to interpret [ 83 ]. In this regard, the sensitization to engage the population around air pollution problems is necessary to promote behavioral changes towards the air quality control strategies and the self-protection attitudes [ 34 ].…”

Breathing Spaces: Modelling Exposure in Air Pollution Science

“…As the modelling process highlighted, defining sites and spaces of exposure in relation to a stable human occupant risks ignoring complex urban geographies and in between spaces that can determine social differences in exposure, the subtle yet (as the scientific research that informs this article suggests) significant effects of dwelling differently, (e.g. that don't conform to the nuclear family model) and the everyday practices that might 'design' and transform the air (Zee, 2015; see also Calvillo and Garnett 2019). Domestic environments are clearly relevant for public health research around air pollution; however, by attending to bodies as generative of spaces through breathing, corollary questions can follow, about what spaces matter because of the bodies that live and breathe in them.…”

Atmospheric infrastructures to deal with the toxic air in a common world

“…It grew and moved depending on the wind, making not only the quantity of the particles visible, but meteorological conditions too. In terms of the socialities or possible commons that it created, through an ethnography conducted by anthropologist Emma Garnett we realised how, instead of creating some sort of parliament of things or space for discussion about air pollution, the collectivity that took place below the mist was much closer to Berlant's proposition: people were one next to each other, engaged in different activities: asking questions about air pollution, playing, resting, chatting, meeting other people, taking selfies… I have argued with Garnett that this situation was articulated through "molecular intimacies" (Calvillo, Garnett, 2019), where a sense of intimacy Instead of creating some sort of parliament of things or space for discussion about air pollution, the collectivity that took place below the mist was much closer to Berlant's proposition.…”