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Breathe easy: Louisville art installation tracks air pollution in real time

Breathe easy: Louisville art installation tracks air pollution in real time

Save for the extreme examples—Beijing‘s “airpocalypse,” for exampleair pollution is often an invisible problem. For at least a brief period, designers from Brooklyn and data scientists from San Francisco hope to change that in Louisville, Kentucky.

Across the city 25 sensors gather data on air quality, including the concentrations of particulate matter and carbon monoxide, transmitting the data to a colorful, interactive kiosk on the corner of Fourth and Liberty streets in Downtown Louisville. Designers at Brooklyn-based Urban Matter, Inc. dubbed their project Air Bare.

As the downtown screen displays real-time air quality data, they invite passersby to engage with the installation. Encased in bright orange, powder-coated steel, a video screen fills with bubbles representing particles of air pollution. Poke your head into the display and you can pop the bubbles, earning points and taking air quality quizzes. Urban Matter’s Rick Lin told WFPL the playfulness is meant to inspire action:

A big part of the component of this piece is educational, so once we grab people’s attention, we want—without being too preachy—to give them some information to help them make better decisions every day.

Urban Matter conceived the short-term piece with the Office of Civic Innovation, Louisville Metro Government, and San Francisco’s Creative Commons. On their website, the firm said they hope the project “creates awareness, identifies sources of pollution and propels the public to take action.”

Open in time for a health symposium attended by Prince Charles, the piece will be up for six to eight months.

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