Architectures of Air: Media Ecologies of Smart Cities and Pollution1

In this chapter Jussi Parikka discusses air pollution and waste as media, data and environmental art created in the contemporary smart city. The way these, otherwise unwanted, elements are sensed and perceived unveil the political subjectivity in an urban context and as data feedback from various readings, understandings and governance of the city. This sort of a materiality is one that is about folds between architectures, data and the chemistry of the air -a sort of a media ecology of multiple materialities. The creative power of smog that intertwines old computational infrastructures of urban pollution and new infrastructures such as monitors, programming and data storage is explained. The chapter focuses on urban environments as defined by the emergence of new forms of measurement of the city -and its airborne pollution - through smog sensors. The smart, modern city as defined through its unwanted elements, in this case, pollution and waste, are further discussed.