Seth Keen

In the AIR project coordinated by Beatriz, I identified a number of what could possibly called open source correlations which are written here as free flow thoughts. Firstly, the documentation is very detailed and informative with links to secondary sources and background processes. This seems to flow across many of Beatriz’s projects. For example a website was prepared in advance for this workshop with categories created for documenting the workshops at each location. I was really interested from a practice perspective on the types of documentation used to record projects like AIR or pigeonblog in detail. An example of how the processes are as important as the outcome, and are key components of the outcome. From an open source perspective documentation is a pivotal aspect of sharing knowledge or in this case providing the directions needed to create open hardware/software tools for collecting scientific data. (As I write Beatriz is recording photographic images of our group crowded around an electronic ‘breadboard’ connecting and disconnecting wires, in what I would call a miniature landscape.) AIR as a project is part of moving a data collection process out from the scientific enclaves into the hands of the broader community as Beatriz states in the summary of the air project:

AIR is a public, social experiment in which people are invited to use Preemptive Media’s portable air monitoring devices to explore their neighborhoods and urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots.

A process that is for example, emblematic of the shift of media production out of the high-end production studio into the hands of the public, who have access to a desktop computer and the Internet. Often we are fed statistics and have no idea of how these figures where collated. Having the opportunity to collect scientific data, like having the potential to produce media content is an empowering way to understand these processes on another level. The access in regards to building the hardware to collect data moves beyond the current social media model of all the work being done for the user. This is where increasingly all that has to be done is to add content to an infrastructure that has been developed. In the air workshop we follow specific stages, experiencing the development of the hardware needed to collect data from a bottom-up approach. Imagine in my own teaching getting students to assemble a weblog content management system, I wonder how that would effect their understanding of blogging. I did have one student who took a blog apart and stuck it back together by playing around with the PHP code, but that is pretty rare. Beatriz spoke of moving the contact with projects like ‘air’ beyond artists out into the community. In pigeonblog I was intrigued by the interest pigeon fanciers showed in becoming involved in the data collection process. These are art projects that engage with the general public in some form or another where people make contributions, and become involved.