What streams of data go unnoticed, what flows of cause and effect are sensed and obscured, measured and felt? What would happen if we threw data into the air, what shape would it form, what words would fall? How might we imagine a different type of informatic stream? The film sketch that results from these questions attempts to re-stream air pollution causes and effects. The chemical elements of particulate matter, the products that contribute to it; health impacts, how people sense and notice pollution events, invisible cartographies of the social, political, and cultural swept along by the transboundary nature of air.

During our studio process we were in dialogue with Professor Jennifer Gabrys (University of Cambridge) about her project Citizen Sense. These conversations enabled us to understand how participants in her research sense, monitor and communicate pollution events in their local environment. Questions arose such as: who writes the narrative, who is the expert, who makes the science and data? Out of these questions we facilitated a series of speculative writing workshops with scientists, artists, researchers and the general public; to think-with particulate matter and to co-construct knowledge across disciplines and expertise.

Film credit

Studio film sketch, Sense, work in progress

Matterlurgy is a collaborative artistic-research practice by London based artists Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright. Their work critically explores the intersections of art and ecology through interdisciplinary collaboration with scientists, technologists and communities. Recent projects have addressed flooding, land degradation, air pollution, climate modelling and simulation.

Matterlurgy were UK Artist Associates as part of Delfina Foundation’s Art, Science and Technology programme, 2019. Their work has recently been featured in the journal Third Text and Remain, a publication by Jussi Parikka, Rebecca Schneider, Ioana B. Jucan, University of Minnesota Press, 2019.