pollution – Sensing Our World

Rare Earthenware

Title: Rare Earthenware
Artists: Unknown Field Division in collaboration with FIX
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): visual
Issue(s): toxic e-waste, metals, pollution

The Unknown Fields Division is a ‘nomadic design research studio that ventures out on expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness’.¹ Therefore, it is concerned with the various problematic interactions between nature and society. A particular project from the studio, Rare Earthenware was foregrounded in Neural in 2016. This project concerned visibilising the e-waste in the form of toxic metal, integral to the production of digital technologies such as smartphones and laptops.

In the Rare Earthenware project, documentation from areas of rare earth metal production were combined with ceramics production to create a visual and material representation of the toxicity of production of digital devices. The project traced the global supply chain of rare earth metals to ‘their source at a toxic lake in Inner Mongolia’.² Mud was taken from this lake and vases were created from the mud, in collaboration with ceramicist Kevin Callaghan. The vases were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2014, and an accompanying video was also produced.

Human Sensor

Title: Human Sensor
Artist(s): Kasia Molglas
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Visual
Issue(s): Air pollution

This performance piece visibilises urban air pollution through a combination of a dance performance and wearable environmental sensors. The environmental sensors monitor air pollution, and the wearable costumes involve a mask that both monitors the air quality of the artist wearing the costume, and allows the costume to visually respond to the wearer’s respiration. It therefore revealed to urban audiences the visibility of environmental air pollution, while involving the performers in themselves being affected by the pollution. In this way, the project held a sense of complicity – at once the audience were given an aestheticisation of air pollution, yet in visibilising the pollution data, the audience was also aware that the performers were in real-time being subjected to that pollution. In this way, the Human Sensor work is a very visceral way of communicating a key environmental issue in contemporary urban contexts.

Cocíclo

Title: Cocíclo
Artist(s): Alexandre Castonguay
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Carbon monoxide pollution

Cocíclo is a device that measures carbon monoxide concentrations in urban environments. This device consists of various entities, such as a wearable that geolocates the user wearing the device, while also alerting the user with sound beeps depending on concentrations of CO. Additionally there is a ‘Cocíclo marker’ which is a ‘chalk-marking tool that inscribes the CO variations directly on the sidewalks or streets of the city’.¹ What is a key point for this project is in the observation that ‘The traditional visualization tools are not adequate for citizen involvement: We often witness data heatmaps of pollutants within our cities but they feel distant since they are not related to our actual experiences. Being situated at street level and witnessing the rapid evolution of pollutants because of our proximity to the sources of pollution, the data becomes more accurate (carbon monoxide dissipates rapidly from the emitting source), the experience is embodied and not abstracted’.² The chalk itself is impermanent, and thus serves as a suitable material for inscribing the data on streets, without the permanency of other materials. Thus, it both visibilises environmental data, and does so in a way that allows for changing levels of CO concentrations across time.

Pikslo deep diving

strong>Title: Pikslo deep diving
Artist(s): Robertina Šebjanič
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Underwater noise pollution

This project consists of field recordings and workshops to investigate the role of underwater noise pollution. The project acknowledges underwater noise pollution caused by human activity, and asks us to reflect on the sonic impacts of human activity on marine life.

Project Dust

Title: Project Dust
Artist(s): Brother Nut
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Sight? tangible
Issue(s): Air pollution, PM2.5, particulates

In this project, Brother Nut used an industrial vacuum cleaner to suck up air pollution in Beijing. He did this for 100 days, collecting the material. He then mixed it with red clay to produce a brick. In a sense this both visibilised and made tangible the air pollution in Beijing. The piece is therefore a thought piece on the levels of pollution in cities such as Beijing, and also a way of materialising such pollution.

Sink

Title: Sink
Artist(s): Julian Priest
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Visual
Issue(s): co2 pollution, ocean acidification

This piece is a sculptural work from 2012 that stands ‘as a model of anthropogenic ocean acidification’.¹ Priest placed a scallop shell in brine, and attached a small combustion motor to the installation, and into the brine pumps the exhaust gases. This ‘killing environment’ ² thus simulates the contemporary environment of ocean acidification and pollution. Over time, the carbon dioxide released from the combustion engine, reacts with the brine, making it more acidic and eroding the scallop shell. This is a representation of the damage created by carbon, and at once it reveals the usually hidden ‘mechanics of operation and the connections with the world’ (ibid.), especially those of contemporary technologies. For Priest, ‘even when the workings are exposed, most of the time the environmental impact of a technology is not explicitly stated, but treated as an externality’ (ibid.).

For the purposes of this project, this piece is interesting in how it visibilises the process of environmental degradation, through the erosion of the scallop shell, while visibly connecting the cause – the combustion engine and carbon – into the installation. This removes the conceptual distance between what society does in its carbon-intensive practices, and the destruction that may be spatially distant from that society. By juxtaposing these two elements together in a ‘killing environment’, Priest removes that conceptual distance.

CarbonScape

Title: CarbonScape
Artist: Chris Cheung
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): audio, visual, installation
Issue(s): carbon pollution

CarbonScape by Chris Cheung is of particular salience for this project in that it sonifies carbon pollution data, while also visibilising it. The work is an 18-track ambient sound installation, whereby the artist draws upon environmental pollution data and uses it to manipulate sounds of sampled car and aircraft engines, along with other built environmental sounds such as air conditioning and noise from factories.¹ Cheung uses an environmental dataset of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from NOAA, which confirms that the levels of co2 ‘have reached the highest levels seen in the past three million years’(ibid.).

For the installation itself, black spheres are placed in transparent tubes. The representation of the increasing co2 levels is achieved in a twofold manner. First, the intensity of the sound levels, ie. engine and industrial noise, increases over time. This is synchronised with the visual representation of increase, through the black balls rising through the transparent tubes.

For the purposes of this project, CarbonScape both visibilises and sonifies a well-established and respected environmental dataset. Furthermore, while not tacticle per se, the embodiment of the audience within the work makes it also a potentially visceral and tactile experience.

BioSoNot 1.2 / 2.0

Title: BioSoNot 1.2 / 2.0
Artist(s): Gilberto Esparza
Source: WMMNA
Sense(s): sound
Issue(s): river pollution

In this piece, the artist created a sound installation that incorporates sensor data from rivers. The sensors collected various data parameters such as the activity of bacteria in the river, river pH, temperature, amongst others. ¹ Concerned about the levels of pollution in Mexican rivers, Esparza wished to ‘sonify’ this data. To this end he created a machine that would turn the sensor data collected, into analogue signals that could then be sounded. Furthermore, the device also cleaned the water as it worked, providing an ecological restoration service as it was at once rendering manifest the pollution to an audience.