Air Spaces
Autors: Anh-ton Tran, Jonas Voigt, Tung Lin
Air Spaces investigated new roles and forms of citizen engagement related to climate change in the decades to come by exploring the tension between top-down and bottom-up forces. While there is a widespread recognition of climate change as a pressing issue, there seems to be a genuine challenge on defining modes of engagement of regular people with the causes of climate change. One way of connecting climate change to people’s everyday lives is to emphasize the connection between energy sources, climate change and air quality.
Air quality is not an equitable issue and New York City is a prime example of these climate-based lines of segregation. Neighborhoods like Harlem and The Bronx have manufacturing or transit infrastructures that cause congestion, smog, and air of a much lower quality than Manhattan. Inspired by the citizen science initiatives, this project aims to tackle climate science from a sensorial perspective to provide more entry and access to advocacy to the general populace. Experiences that would activate people were designed, hence we called it Air Spaces. The goal is to provide spaces for people to spark conversations on Air Quality that didn’t overwhelm I worked with two other fellow students, Anh-ton Tran and Tung Lin, to construct a series of installation prototypes that tackles these issues.
What are the potential roles of citizen engagement in climate change? How would younger generations relate to climate sensing practices as the effects of climate change become increasingly evident?
We studied and researched as much of the systemic problem was we could. Creating systems diagrams was an iterative process that we did throughout the project to understand our goals and how our project fit into this space. Below is our latest diagram.
Process
Mapping
We studied and researched as much of the systemic problem was we could. Creating systems diagrams was an iterative process that we did throughout the project to understand our goals and how our project fit into this space. Below is our latest diagram.
Inspiration
Air quality had two aspects about it that fascinated us. When it was bad it became physically visible and tangible, but it could also dissipate and become completely unnoticed. It also had a scale that was engulfing but dependent on the container someone would be in to understand the scale. We toyed with ideas of using scale to create impact, and trying to make invisible particles physical. We also became obsessed with Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic dome.
Prototyping
We worked with two guiding design statements, the ways in which we can make the invisible into something physical, and the ways in which we can create an experience that sparks change. Below is our process.
We went through many images and precedent works by installation artists that straddled our concepts. We tried our hand at building various scaled down, makeshift versions to understand the physics and feasibility.
Iterative Workshops and Provotype
We settled on using a projection experience with aromatics to use as a provotype that we would test with students. Participants would fill out a journey map as they went through the experience to give us a better understanding of they’re relationship towards air quality. Afterwards they mapped out their thoughts and created a short skit that embodied their knowledge and desires of the future of air quality. We ran 5 workshops in total.
Building
Taking the insights we gained from the user research generated in the workshop, we began constructing the installations. We produced all of the individual components ourselves spending many late hours in the Making Center.
Instalation Layout
We envisioned a full exhibition experience that would guide people through a sensorial understanding of air quality climate science. Users would first walk through a constriction tunnel consisting of dangling threads that mimic aspects of bad air, and then enter into the “air bubble” where they would experience a positive air experience. Finally a wall of reciprocity would allow people to exhale and leave a message and their breath for others to experience.
Installation 1 — Constriction Tunnel
In our workshop many participants used words such as “claustrophobic” and described bad air quality as sticky. Poor air also has a cumulative effect and collects on our bodies. We made a small pathway where we dangled frayed twine to simulate these sensory descriptions our research participants described. Forcing people to crotch down and walk through a small chamber created this feeling of confined space, scenes were people often notice changes in air quality. The inside was spritzed with our bad air tonic we crafted for the workshop.
Installation 2 — Air Bubble
Our journey maps showed us that guiding people through breathing exercises and positive air analogs after sensing bad air created more thoughts and conversation. Large, open spaces were also consistently mentioned as being associated with good air. So we wanted to then guide people to a positive experience inside a giant bubble to create this sense of space and scale. We attached a projection screen in our dome that projected positive air environments with an animation that guided participant’s breathing.
Installation 3 — Exhale
Giving our users so many inputs made us realize the importance of creating an outlet to express their thoughts. We found that in the workshop the stories and conversations produced when participants created a skit and explained it to each other was powerful. It was paramount to create a similar space rendered in a more tangible form. So we created a balloon wall where visitors could breathe out into a balloon, and write a message or thought on it. They would then share it by pinning it onto the wall. In a way this was the perfect closing for our project. It created a poeticness and live metaphor for the act of breathing, inhaling the sensory experiences we gave them and exhaling their thoughts and feelings afterwards.
Curriculum
The booklet for environmental advocacy groups and schools is introducing five steps to bring the exhibition experience into the classroom. It’s focusing on the following question: How might change happen, if we were able to experience air more viscerally? In the workshop, students will be guided through an experience that will immerse them into various air quality contexts, a guided breathing exercise to wrap their heads around the concept of air quality and to be mindful of what they introduce into their bodies every day. The content is structured as the following: Visual Journey, Group Brainstorm, Group Mapping, Imaginative Sketch, Shareback, and Notes. Through a series of design exercises, students will crystallize and gain a new found agency in their understanding of air. They will also imagine a future of what air quality could be. Air might be fleeting, but understanding and talking about it is not.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Creating spaces can have a profound effect on people. Our Air Bubble and balloons lived on after we presented our project for our final critiques. We wanted the installation to be where people could reflect and think about their relationship to their air quality, but so much more emerged. Classes were conducted inside, critical debates were held, and people blew off steam and bonded during the craziness of semester finals. It became a space to engage and listen and at the end of the day that’s what drove this project. The project is now being submitted in tandem with the other team in our studio for a fully rendered exhibition at the school. WeAct is considering commissioning installations in their community centers for people to experience, and we have packaged a printed curriculum of our workshops and findings to be disseminated. If anything what I gained from this experience was understanding how experiences can create shifts in people that will hopefully lead towards larger movements of change.
