Our First Design Intervention

Down The Pipe
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Ideation

Team: Nicolo, Marius, Ana, Anthuanet and me.

We put our personal design spaces in common to form a shared design space. This helped us understand where we wanted to focus our intervention. We realised that all of us were interested in human-machine creative collaborations and how technology & data could help "make the non-visual visual", through different types of sensors, for example. We then discussed the possible intervention spaces around us in Barcelona. We chose the underground metro network as it is a large unused urban space, which could be used for more than just transit. Inspired by a recent study on bad air quality in underground networks, we decided to make air quality in underground networks tangible, as most metro users are not aware of the quality of the air that they breathe while underground. This is especially relevant as governments are encouraging us to increase our use of public transport to fight climate change – but is that good for human health? Being interested in performative interventions, we decided to use sound as a way to translate the level of air quality in Barcelona's metro stations. 

Arduino Code

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The Intervention

We carried our device along the L4 line of Barcelona`s underground network, on a journey to IAAC, from La Pau to Bogatell. We stopped at each station to "listen" to the air quality. We concluded that the stations with the worst air quality were Bogatell and Besos Mar, as we recorded the highest sound pitches in these stations. This could be due to scarse air ventilation in these metro stations or the affluence of people,

Final Reflections

This first design intervention was an example of role 2 prototyping, when prototypes are developed as instruments to collect, measure and and record data. However, we imagined this intervention as an intermediary step towards  other types of interventions. 

Questions for further exploration could be:

What happens when metro users can listen to air quality? Would that create a different relationship to air quality and underground networks?

Sounds have agency. They have the power to evoke emotions, influence moods, and shape our perceptions of the environment. They are part of the non-human entanglements that shape the human experience and the world around us.

The concept of interspecies collaboration could also be explored in this project. As underground networks are large unused spaces, could other living species thrive in underground environments and purify the air that humans breathe?

As an unused space with tremendous potential for social interaction, could the underground network be used as a space to connect the disconnected? Could performative installations help in doing that?

Metro stations and trains provide shared spaces where people from diverse backgrounds come together every day. What if this space could be used to address social polarisation or digitally-induced loneliness?

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My Updated Design Space

This exercise, along with other interactions with classmates and faculty inspired me to extend my design space. I added the elements highlighted in yellow in the image above.

Human-machine creative collaborations could offer opportunities to tackle digitally induced loneliness, as citizen sensing and the data derived from it could help us identify potential spaces in which the disconnected could easily connect, such as in underground networks for example.

I was particularly drawn to performative design, as a way to make the non-perceivable perceivable. How would people react to perceiving/feeling/hearing/seeing the level of social interaction in a given space? Would this change their relationship with social interaction? Could a performative intervention serve to connect the disconnected?

Citizen sensing and data collection is a form of surveillance in itself. But this can be surveillance for good purposes (i.e. collecting air quality data to improve health, collecting information on social interaction to improve social interaction). Could we maximise technological surveillance for good endeavours?

I was also inspired by the intervention of another group on reconfiguring your body to shape your identity and by our Biology Zero class, which taught us about the possibility to bio-hack organisms to give them new functions. What if our our body could be reconfigured through bio-hacked organisms to improve digital camouflage against surveillance. What if the same could be done with nature.


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