PROGRAM EARTH Electronic Mediations Series Editors: N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Krapp, Rita Raley, and Samuel Weber Founding Editor: Mark Poster 49 Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet Jennifer Gabrys 48 On the Existence of Digital Objects Yuk Hui 47 How to Talk about Videogames Ian Bogost 46 A Geology of Media Jussi Parikka 45 World Projects: Global Information before World War I Markus Krajewski 44 Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound Lori Emerson 43 Nauman Reiterated Janet Kraynak 42 Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman, Editors 41 Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World Ulises Ali Mejias 40 Summa Technologiae Stanisław Lem 39 Digital Memory and the Archive Wolfgang Ernst 38 How to Do Things with Videogames Ian Bogost 37 Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture Peter Krapp (continued on page 359) PROGRAM EARTH Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet JENNIFER GABRYS Electronic Mediations 49 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for the publication of this book from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 313347, “Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice: Assessing Participatory Engagements with Environments through Sensor Technologies.” An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as “Sensing an Experimental Forest: Processing Environments and Distributing Relations,” in Computational Culture 2 (2012), http://www.computationalculture.net. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “Ecological Observatories: Fluctuating Sites and Sensing Subjects,” in Field_Notes, edited by Laura Beloff, Erich Berger, and Terike Haapoja, 178– 87 (Helsinki: Finnish Bioarts Society, 2013). Portions of chapter 5 were published as “Monitoring and Remediating a Garbage Patch,” in Research Objects in Their Technological Setting, edited by Bernadette Bensaude Vincent et al. (London: Routledge, 2016). An earlier version of chapter 7 was published as “Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City,” Environment and Planning D 32, no. 1 (2014): 30– 48. Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gabrys, Jennifer. Title: Program earth : environmental sensing technology and the making of a computational planet / Jennifer Gabrys. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2016. | Series: Electronic mediations ; 49 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015022473| ISBN 978-0-8166-9312-2 (hc) | ISBN 978-0- 8166-9314-6 (pb). Subjects: LCSH: Environmental monitoring—Remote sensing. | Environmental management—Remote sensing. | Global environmental change—Remote sensing. | Remote sensing—Data processing. Classification: LCC GE45.R44 .G33 2016 | DDC 363.7/063—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015022473 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments / vii Introduction: Environment as Experiment in Sensing Technology / 1 Part I. Wild Sensing 1 Sensing an Experimental Forest: Processing Environments and Distributing Relations / 29 2 From Moss Cam to Spillcam: Techno-Geographies of Experience / 57 3 Animals as Sensors: Mobile Organisms and the Problem of Milieus / 81 Part II. Pollution Sensing 4 Sensing Climate Change and Expressing Environmental Citizenship / 111 5 Sensing Oceans and Geo-Speculating with a Garbage Patch / 137 6 Sensing Air and Creaturing Data / 157 Part III. Urban Sensing 7 Citizen Sensing in the Smart and Sustainable City: From Environments to Environmentality / 185 8 Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism / 207 9 Digital Infrastructures of Withness: Constructing a Speculative City / 241 Conclusion: Planetary Computerization, Revisited / 267 Notes / 277 Bibliography / 307 Index / 337 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First sparked through an interest in remote sensing and environments that began with an online project on satellites over ten years ago under the title of Signal Space, the material gathered together for this study on environmental sensing technologies has been a long time in the making. From urban sensing to automated gardens, I have developed an ongoing habit of attending to and work- ing with technologies that would animate and monitor environments. Developed alongside prior work that I have assembled on electronic waste, this work on environmental sensing is also part of a larger project of attending to the environ- mental and material aspects of computational technologies. Sensor- based tech- nologies are not only environmentally located; they also in- form and “program” environments, have environmental impacts, and take hold in particular environ- ments, whether for managing or monitoring processes. As I outline in the pages that follow, this is an interdisciplinary and even postdisciplinary project of attend- ing to these emerging technical objects and milieus. As a modest disclaimer, I might also note that this study is inevitably incom- plete, since it attends to an ever-growing area of environmental computing. There are many topics I was not able to accommodate fully in these pages. This is not a handbook for understanding the finer details of sensors as technical objects, nor is it a survey of the wide range of citizen- sensing or creative- practice projects using environmental sensors. Despite the earthly expanse of the title, this study is also not quite as “global” as it could be, since inevitably quite incisive discussions could be developed around the commercial, military, and even colonial unfoldings of ubiquitous computing in locations worldwide, with often uneven outcomes. While I engage with citizen- sensing practices here, this is also not primarily an ethnographic or practice- based study, since this work is still in development through a current collaborative research project that I am leading, Citizen Sense. vii viii / Preface and Acknowledgments Instead, what I have developed here is more of a theoretical and ethico- aesthetic investigation that emphasizes both the environmental and sensor- based aspects of ubiquitous computing technologies and practices. As described in these pages, this work has also taken me to many locations where environmental sensing has been in use and under active development. This work would not have been pos- sible if it were not for the generosity and attention of multiple interlocutors who have met up with me to discuss their research, made field sites available for visits, sent along notices for related events, and exchanged ideas about environmental sensors. While this is a far- from- comprehensive account, below are some of the people (and organizations) who have aided in the development of this work. Thanks are due to the researchers on the CENS sensing project who hosted me during fieldwork conducted in 2008 both at UCLA and the UC James Reserve while writing chapters 1 and 2, including Mark Hansen, Deborah Estrin, Michael Hamilton, Eric Graham, Josh Hyman, Chuck Taylor, Katie Shilton, Hossein Falaki, and Becca Fenwick, among others. I am grateful to Matthew Fuller and Mike Michael for their helpful suggestions for improving and clarifying early versions of chapter 1. I presented a version of chapter 2 at the Emerging Landscapes con- ference at the University of Westminster, and I am thankful to the organizers and participants at this event for their feedback on this work. Cecilia Mascolo at Cambridge University helped by meeting with me to dis- cuss her work on monitoring badger movement in 2010 and sent me several key papers and event references to familiarize me with the field of movement ecology, which has informed my work in chapter 3. Erich Berger and Laura Beloff were generous hosts during my residency in Kilpisjärvi in 2012 and in creating a context for experimenting with the topic of environmental computing, which developed into the material written for chapter 4. This text has further benefited from par- ticipant and organizer feedback during the presentation given at Sense of Planet: The Arts and Ecology at Earth Magnitude, a National Institute for Experimental Arts symposium at the University of New South Wales (2012). Chapter 5 would not have emerged if it were not for the generous invita- tion from Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent to write about the garbage patch for a workshop on technoscientific objects in 2012. Thanks are due to her, Sacha Loeve, Alfred Nordmann, and Astrid Schwarz for organizing this engaging writing work- shop, as well as to participants for their feedback on earlier versions of this text. Thanks are also due to Richard Thompson, who provided multiple points of clar- ification and helpful suggestions on the topic of ocean plastics,