Doors of Perception

John Thackara, the director of Doors of Perception, has written a report that describes the In The Air project.

This text also appears at the fabulous site of the DESIGN OBSERVER group. We mentioned this web in our Post about the article of Javier Arbona "Dangers In The Air".

We can also find at Design Observer another interesting posts like CO2 Cubes in Copenhagen.

Reference sent by Asier Pérez, Funky Projects.

Photovoltaic panels in Madrid

The Spanish Company IM2 in colaboration with the German Krannich opens the bigest area for photovoltaic panels in Madrid.

This will avoid the emission of 430 T of CO2 and will save 91.459 l of petroleo every year.

We can read more in Ecología Verde.

AFECTADONUDOSUR

AV Nudo Sur is an Association of people living in the south west of Madrid. From their WEB they give information about the situation of the district, and the air quality of the area.

Some important roads that give acces to the center of the city are located in this place, and there´s a lot of traffic during the rush hours. With the In The Air application we can see how the pollution increases during this hours, and how this situation happens almost every day.

"Dangers in the Air"

Bompas & Parr: Alcoholic Architecture, 2009. [Photograph: Bompas & Parr. All images courtesy of Air: Alphabet City No. 15]


Javier Arbona, a PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley with a background in architecture and urbanism, has written the article "Dangers in the Air: Aerosol Architecture and Invisible Landscapes" for the next issue of Alphabet City: Air.

A shorter version of the text has been published at Places / Design Observer.

The text describes how the air has been a working material for some recent artistic and architectural projects, unfolding some of it´s perceptive and theoretical implications.

In the Air is one of the references.

Congratulations Javier.

I LOVE BICIS

I LOVE BICIS, a blog from the El Pais newspaper, encourages people to use the bici.

We love them too!

In The Air at the Smart Future Minds Ehibition

In The Air has been selected for the Smart Future Minds exhibition!

This award shows our cities future from diferents points of views, and It´s been showed at the Smart Urban Stage in Berlín, Roma, Londres and Madrid (from 20th of october to 11th of november).

MADRID EN BICI

We want to go cycling in Madrid!!

Here we have some platforms that claim the use of bicicles in Madrid and ask the Council for the correct conditions of rails and trafic in the city, and more security for the cyclists:

ENBICIPORMADRID

BICICRÍTICA

NOSOLOMETRO

PEDALIBRE

*Picture of cyclists in Madrid during the Bicicrítca.

Madrid reduces pollution changing the way of measure it

The national newspaper El País has published an extended report about the situation of the air pollution in Madrid and the changes of the location of the measuring station. It also explains the "real" ways that cities like Barcelona, París, Roma, Londres y Berlin reduce their pollution.

Madrid reduces the pollution arround 26% only in one year. The way to do it? Changing the location of the measuring stations: moving some of them to green areas and deleting others that were in the places with higher levels of pollution.

Information sent by Iván López Munuera, Uriel Fogué and Pep Tornabell.

Here you can see and old post .

Pollution Maps

Maps produced by the In The Air aplication:

Maps of particles PM10 in Madrid.

Maps of particles PM10, the high density of population areas and the low density of population areas in Madrid.

Maps of particles PM10, the most expensive and cheapest areas in Madrid.

WARNING OF HIGH NO2 LEVELS IN MADRID

On October 21 there were high levels of NO2 pollution in some stations of the center of Madrid (Ramon y Cajal, Cuatro Caminos, Escuelas Aguirre and Méndez Álvaro) for several hours . The council recommended the use of public transport. If the warning limits were exceeded, the traffic in the city could be stopped.

Here's the information in various media:

EFEVERDE

ESPORMADRID (22 10 10)

ESPORMADRID (18 10 10)

MADRIDIARIO

MUNIMADRID

ECOLOGISTAS EN ACCIÓN

AFECTADOSNUDOSUR

AFECTADOSNUDOSUR (28 10 10)

*Picture published in Madridiario.

In the air referenced at Pécs

Our friends Attila Bujdoso and Melinda Sipos from Kitchen Budapest told us that Martjin de Waal showed as reference project at 'After the cultural city' conference, in
Pécs.


Martjin had written a very interesting comparition between In the air and San Francisco Map at The mobile city after our virtual meeting at Electrosmog.

Common Sense, mobile air quality sensing

Common Sense is developing several prototypes of mobile air quality sensing devices, which would enable citizens to produce their own data. "We hope our project will illustrate ways in which everyday citizens can use sensing technologies to conduct citizen science and participate in the political process". Even if the project does a great effort in the design of the products, we belive that the participatory process should be designed as well in order to be able to produce certain effects.

The Common Sense team is a large multidisciplinary group around Berkley University, Nokia and University of Michigan.

City Sense: an open, urban scale sensor network testbed

The project City Sense is already 3 years old, but it is certanly one of the largest examples of a sensing distributed network. A key point of the project is their understanding of their interconnected system as an infrastructure that other projects can use independently of their air quality measurments.

It has been developed by Harvard University and BBN Technologies.

New aplication to check the air quality

The Environmental Softwarw and Modelling Group of the Politecnic University of Madrid (GMSMA) developes an aplication that allows to check the air quality. This work belongs to the project “España Virtual”, leaded by Deimos Space. Indra Espacio, the National Center of Geographic Information (IGN/CNIG), Grid Systems, Geovirtual, some Universities and research centers are also involved.

Clik here to visualice the article published in "Tendencias Informáticas".

Reference sent by Alfonso Sánchez.

CLIMATE DRESS

This dress incorporates a detector of CO2: when the concentration is higher the LEDs lit up more.

"The Climate Dress is made of conductive embroidery, over hundred of tiny LED lights inserted into the embroidey, a CO2 sensor and an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor. The LEDs visualize the level of CO2 in the nearby surroundings and are powered trough the embroidery! For The Climate Dress we used soft conductive thread that has a similar consistence to the kind of thread used for traditional and industrial embroidery production. This way it is possible to make embroidery that become more than an esthetical element in clothing and interior textiles."

Designed by Diffus, Tine M. Jensen, Forster Rohner, Alexandra Instituto, and The Danish Design School.

LABO_IN THE AIR

New exhibition at the LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón with In The Air and some more research projects on new urban strategies: Habitar.

"Habitar is a walk through new emerging scenarios in the city. It is a catalogue of ideas and images from artists, design and architecture studios, and hybrid research centres. Together they come up with a series of potential tools, solutions and languages to negotiate everyday life in the new urban situation".

We present some In The Air news: an interactive projection, maps that show the pollution linked with the urban structure, some 3D stereolithographies that allows to understand the events and the day-working of the city in relation with the levels of pollution. We pretend to explode and develope the analytical skills, communication and experience of the application.

Thu, May 27 , 2010-Mon, November 8 , 2010

CURATOR: José Luis de Vicente

CONCEPTUAL ADVISOR: Fabien Girardin.

ARTISTS: Timo Arnall, Julian Bleecker, Ángel Borrego - Office for Strategic Spaces, Nerea Calvillo, Citilab-Cornellà, Pedro Miguel Cruz, Dan Hill, IaaC - Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña, kawamura-ganjavian + Maki Portilla Kawamura + Tanadori Yamaguchi, Aaron Koblin, Philippe Rahm architectes, Marina Rocarols, Enrique Soriano, Pep Tornabell, Theodore Molloy, Semiconductor, SENSEable City Lab, Mark Shepard

More information here.

Clik here to visualice the article published at Plataforma SINC, Servicio de Información y Noticias científicas.

The Office of Environment ask for an explanation about the new location of the stations.

The Office of Environment requests the Madrid City Council for an explanation about the new location of the monitoring stations of air pollutants in the city.

The Office of Environment thinks that instead of solving the causes of high pollution levels, the City Council is eliminating some of the monitoring stations, which does not mean that the problem has been resolved but lead to think that has been hidden.

Click here for more information: article published in the local newspaper ADN.

Reference sent by Raquel Osa Fernández.

at Processing.org

In the air was published at Processing´s Exhibition page. Thanks to Casey Reas for the invitation!
And thanks to the coders and to Toxi for some of his lines.

NUEVO SISTEMA INFORMÁTICO

Se desarrolla un nuevo sistema informático para controlar y prevenir la contaminación atmosférica. Ha sido realizado en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid como parte de la tesis doctoral del alumno Juan Luis Pérez Camaño, dirigida por el profesor Roberto San José, director del Grupo de Modelos y Software para el Medio Ambiente (GMSMA) de la Facultad.

Publicación de la noticia en la plataforma SINC:

"Un sistema informático que permite de forma robusta y eficiente el control y la previsión de la contaminación atmosférica, ha sido desarrollado en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (FIUPM), según informa esta Facultad en un comunicado.
El sistema informático tiene capacidad para realizar predicciones de calidad del aire en tiempo real y para analizar el impacto de las diversas fuentes emisoras, tanto estáticas como dinámicas, en modo operacional, por lo que da respuesta al interés de las autoridades ambientales por reducir los problemas de calidad del aire.
La calidad del aire en un territorio determinado viene dada por la distribución geográfica de las fuentes de emisión, las cantidades de contaminantes emitidas, los procesos físico-químicos que se producen en la atmósfera y la climatología y la orografía, que condicionan los procesos de dispersión y transporte.
El sistema desarrollado en la FIUPM integra modelos complejos de modelización atmosférica, perfectamente adaptados a la complejidad y no linealidad de los procesos que tienen lugar en una atmósfera, que es totalmente dinámica."

Referencia enviada por Nerea García Garmendia.

SPATRAM

Figure: SPATRAM (Spectrometer for Atmospheric TRAcers Monitoring) installed since April 2004 at the University of Evora , Portugal.


Since 1999, DTA is involved in the development of new remote-sensing equipment, in particular Uv-Vis Spectrometers (Figure), devoted to the monitoring of atmospheric compounds (specifically, gaseous compounds as Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3) in the Stratosphere and in “passive mode” (meaning that the source of radiation is the Sun). The spectrometers used in “Active Mode” (the source of radiation is artificial – i.e. Halogen Lamps) can also perform measurements of tropospheric pollutants as BTX, Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) and again NO2 and O3.

Reference sent by André Albuquerque.

RatTales

RateTales is an installation with a large floor projection and camera tracking system, creating a space for interaction among people and a computer-generated swarm of rats. Every rat as well as each visitor has a tail made of letters displaying various quotes about rats. The rats will flee from visitors but attack them from behind. With his rat-tail the individual joins a race, he may perceive as a disgust and a threat.

It is a project of TheGreenEyl

Reference sent by Irma Földényi.