Communicating Air: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Knowing Through Computational Ecomedia by Andrea Polli
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University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2011 Communicating Air: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Knowing through Computational Ecomedia Polli, Andrea http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/889 University of Plymouth All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. Communicating Air: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Knowing through Computational Ecomedia by Andrea Polli BA (Johns Hopkins University) 1989 MFA (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) 1992 A dissertation submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PhD) Word count: 74,050 Supplemented by: Proof of Practice of three case studies on 1 DVD and 1 Audio CD Committee in Charge: First Supervisor: Dr Jill Scott, Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Plymouth Secondary Supervisor: Dr Angelika Hilbeck, ETHZ, Zurich Date of Submission: March 31, 2011 Polli ⓒ 2011 Acknowledgements In addition to her excellent supervisors, the author would like to express special thanks to the following persons who assisted in the development and implementation of this research: Kurt Ralske, for his programming expertise, Sam Bower, for his invitation to curate the Aer exhibition for the Green Museum, Barbara Goldstein, for her courage in inviting Particle Falls, a particulate monitoring public artwork into the San Fernando Corridor Public Art Program for The City of San Jose California, Tim Dye, and the other staff associated with Sonoma Technologies who assisted in the production of the Airlight series and Particle Falls, and finally her partner Chuck Varga for his expertise, advice and endless patience in allowing the author the time needed to complete the dissertation. Copyright Statement This work is licensed to Andrea Polli under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. 2 Polli ⓒ 2011 Abstract This dissertation, Communicating Air: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Knowing through Computational Ecomedia, is the culmination of an art practice-led investigation into ways in which the production of ecomedia may open alternative pathways to environmental knowing in a time of urgent climate crisis. This thesis traces the author’s artistic, personal and political development across the period of study and presents an extended argument for greater public engagement with weather and climate science, greater public and private support for long-term collaborations between media art and climate science, and increased public open access to global weather and climate monitoring and computationally modelled data. While this dissertation addresses weather and climate from a social, political, scientific, and theoretical perspective, it also presents an analysis of a series of projects by the author and others in relation to what human-computer interaction expert Paul Dourish calls “environmental knowing” (2006, p. 304). Since the author’s projects connect art and science primarily through a computational approach, computing is the shared practice that connects scientific understanding to place and content-based creation. A less common term used extensively in this thesis is ecomedia. In media theory, Sean Cubitt (2005) has used the term ecomedia to describe popular film and television works that address environmental concerns. In this thesis, the author employs a narrower definition of the term, that is media made with the emerging technologies, tools, and information structures that describe and model environmental systems. The author proposes that the sphere of monitoring and modelling data is where a transformation is taking place and new forms are emerging. The bulk of this argument has been formed through the collection and interpretation of relevant literature across disciplines, extensive interviews with scientists, other experts and audience members internationally, and the author’s direct experiences creating and presenting location-based ecomedia art projects around the world. 3 Polli ⓒ 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS Prologue page 8 Table 0.1: Sampling of Projects Completed as Part of the Author’s Doctoral Research page 9 Introduction: Scaling the Temporal Terrain page 10 Computational Representation, Risk, and Denaturalisation page 10 Terminology in the Context of this Dissertation page 11 Methods and Methodologies page 15 Chapter Outline page 24 Part I. Background to Research—Environmental Crisis and Ecomedia Chapter 1. Who Owns the Air? Public Participation in Climate Issues page 31 Introduction page 31 The Philosophy of the Common Good page 32 The Buying and Selling of Greenhouse Gasses page 34 Air as Property page 37 Air for Sale in Contemporary Art page 42 The Aer Exhibition page 44 Conclusion page 54 Chapter 2. Soundscape, Sonification and Sound Activism page 58 Introduction page 58 The Politics of Soundwalking page 59 Listening Attitudes: Soundscape versus Music page 62 Table 2.1: Listening Attitudes in Traditional Music as Compared to Soundscape page 63 4 Polli ⓒ 2011 Geosonification, Audification, and Soundscape Composition page 67 Table 2.2: Technology and Subjectivity in Soundscape, Audification and Geosonification page 69 The New York Society for Acoustic Ecology and the NYSoundmap page 74 Ambient Geosonification page 78 Conclusion page 80 Part II. Body of Evidence—Ecomedia as a Catalyst for Environmental Knowing Chapter 3. Witnessing Space [Focus: Taipei] page 83 Introduction page 83 Seeing is Believing page 85 Affect and Data Space page 87 Ambient Sound and Mood page 91 Airlight Case Studies page 97 Successes/Failures page 104 What the Scientists Learned page 107 What the Agenices Learned page 107 What the Author Learned page 108 Conclusion page 109 Chapter 4. Airspace [Focus: McMurdo Station, Antarctica] page 113 Introduction page 113 Radio and Public Perception of the Arctic and Antarctic page 116 The Practical Use of Radio in Antarctica page 119 Reframing Radio in the Antarctic Context page 122 Interdisciplinary Exchange through Listening to McMurdo page 125 5 Polli ⓒ 2011 Data Sonification and Audification by Scientists at McMurdo page 132 Sonic Antarctica Case Study page 134 Conclusion page 138 Chapter 5. Ground Truth [Focus: The Antarctic Dry Valleys] page 141 Introduction page 141 Human Weather Observers in Antarctica page 141 Automated Stations Compared to Human Observers page 145 Embodiment and Ground Truth page 151 Soundscape, Geosonification, and Ground Truth page 157 Ecomedia Experiencing and Monitoring Atmospheres page 159 Conclusion page 161 Chapter 6. Breathtaking: Measuring and Modelling Weather and Climate [Focus: Local Communities] page 164 Introduction page 164 The Public Good and the Cooperative Weather Station Network page 164 Public Access to Satellite and Remote Sensing page 172 Modelling, Prediction, and Public Participation page 177 Hello, Weather! Case Studies page 182 Table 1: Hello, Weather! Community Sites page 185 Successes/Failures page 189 What the Author Learned page 193 What the Organizations Learned page 195 Conclusion page 196 6 Polli ⓒ 2011 Chapter 7. Scary Stories: Risk and Art and Science Collaborations in Extreme Environments [Focus: The Arctic and Antarctic] page 200 Introduction page 200 Art, Science, and Activism at Field Stations in the Arctic and Antarctic page 200 Table 7.1: Structure of the Author’s Residencies in the Arctic and Antarctic page 203 Cultural Geospatial Computing Practices and Situated Knowing page 212 Mapping and Time in the Polar Regions page 217 90 Degrees South Case Study page 220 Conclusion page 221 Conclusion: Remembering Forward page 225 Questions for Further Research page 226 References page 229 Appendixes 1. List of interviews conducted by the author as part of this dissertation research page 241 2. Exhibitions, presentations, awards and publications since joining the PhD program: April 2007–February 2011 page 242 3. Historical timeline of weather and climate page 256 4. Documentation list page 275 Samples of work referred to in this dissertation: Sonic Antarctica Audio CD Ground Truth, Hello, Weather! and Particle Falls videos on DVD 7 Polli ⓒ 2011 Prologue The primary question to be explored through this doctoral thesis is: How can the production of geosonification and other ecomedia open alternative pathways to environmental knowing in a time of urgent climate crisis? A series of practice-based projects led this doctoral thesis. With each project analysed in this dissertation, the author strived to explore and generate a different kind of data and to shift the structure of the work in the context of this data. In order to focus on location, projects have been created in and about distinct geographic areas, some addressing global environmental concerns and others more local issues. Although the author’s art projects in and about dense urban areas like New York City and Taipei have been analysed, the bulk of this thesis has focused on results from the author’s seven-week residency in Antarctica