Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

What do we see when we try to picture air? Do we see clouds or storms? Do we picture it being drawn into our lungs as vital oxygen, carrying away carbon dioxide? Do we see complex, swirling systems of gases and pollutants traveling around the entire globe? Air can mean and be many different things, sometimes all at once. Its instantiation depends heavily on the media through which it is encountered and thought about. This project explores how the object and meaning of air is made through images; how the use of different visual media create air as a different object, be it a chemical composition, material environment or political object. Air, to the embodied senses, is often invisible, beyond the range of bodily sensibilities. When it becomes visible to the body it is always something more than simply air; it is wind, cloud, smog, etc. However, with the inclusion of technologies that extend the human senses, for instance remote sensing technologies, air is made visible as an object in itself; an object that is specifically material and political. This research looks at how the extension of senses and the data thereby produced are turned into images that not only change what air means, but what air is. Using examples, such as atmospheric models, maps, and statistical charts, I look at how the visualisation of air quality data feeds forward to change what counts as air.