Atmospheric Disturbances

Air pollution data is neither ‘fact’ nor all-seeing; no data is. The pollution sensor is positioned at a certain place, and not another; and the reading is taken at a certain time, and not another. At the same time, air pollution itself changes with the rhythm of a city, with weather patterns, and the movements of humans. Data on this topic should therefore be understood as being part of a wider investigation into air pollution, rather than the sole proof of it.

To reflect the situated and partial nature of this data, this installation produced shifting patterns of light in mist, that alter their forms based on the readings in the data. These ‘structures’ in the light expanded and contracted as the pollution measured in the data increased and decreased. The patterns shifted based on the viewers position, coming in and out of focus, preventing any single totalising view of the data, yet producing constantly changing and evolving situated views.

The same data is sonified in time with the projetions, using voices from Verdi’s 1848 opera La Battaglia de Legnano, based in and first performed in Milan. The voices rise and fall in volume as the pollution measured in the data increases and decreases. La Battaglia de Legnano was an explicity political revolutionary opera, and I use it here to remind us of the explicitly political act of examining air pollution in the age of anthropocentric climate change.

This work was produced as part of a collaboration with Superflux for ‘Design In The Age of Experience’, Superstudio Piu, for Milan Design Week 2018.

• http://www.wesleygoatley.com/atmospheric...