Program Earth

Program Earth projects focus on emerging environmental sensor technologies and practices. These projects build on earlier work undertaken in the Signal Space topic area of environments and communication technology, but are especially concerned with computational or digital technologies and new modes of environmental participation in the form of citizen sensing.

Projects within the Program Earth area include:

Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational PlanetMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice,” a European Research Council-funded starting grant (2013-2017) for research on the relationship between environmental sensing and citizen engagement. “Citizen sensing” projects have recently emerged that intend to democratize the collection and use of environmental sensor data. How do these practices give rise to new modes of environmental awareness? Through three case studies – wild sensing, urban sensing and pollution sensing – this project seeks to develop the understandings and possibilities of democratized environmental action through practices of citizen sensing.

Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City,” invited contribution for special issue, “A New Apparatus: Technology, Government, and the Resilient City,” eds. Bruce Braun and Stephanie Wakefield, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(1), 30-48

Ecological Observatories: Fluctuating Sites and Sensing Subjects,” invited chapter for Field_Notes: From Landscape to Laboratory, eds. Erich Berger, Terike Haapoja and Laura Beloff (Finnish Society of Bioart, 2013)

Sensing an Experimental Forest: Processing Environments and Distributing Relations,” Computational Culture, issue 2 (28 September 2012)

Ecological Observatories, Fluctuating Sites and Sensing Subjects,” invited speaker for “Sense of Planet: The Arts and Ecology at Earth Magnitude,” National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA), University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (25 August 2012)

Citizen Science and the Politics of Sensing,” invited keynote speaker for “The Citizen Scientist on the Move: Digital Play, Politics and Epistemology,” University of Utrecht and Waag Society Amsterdam, Netherlands (25-27 June 2012)

The Art of Gathering Environmental Data,” invited plenary speaker for Pixelache, Helsinki, Finland (12 May 2012)

The Politics and Affect of Environmental Computing,” a working group conducted at the Field_Notes / Cultivating Ground arts and sciences environmental data workshop, hosted by Finnish Bioart Society, held at Kilpisjärvi biological station, Finland (September 2011)

 

Related and cross-over Signal Space projects in the Program Earth topic area include:

Telepathically Urban,” in Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture, eds. Alexandra Boutros and Will Straw (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 48-63

Atmospheres of Communication,” in The Wireless Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Technologies, eds. Barbara Crow, Michael Longford and Kim Sawchuk (University of Toronto Press, 2010), 46-59

Automatic Sensation: Environmental Sensors in the Digital City,” in “Senses and the City,” special edition of The Senses and Society, eds. Mags Adams and Simon Guy, vol. 2, no. 2 (July 2007), 189-200