[Visualizar Desk Crit / photo: Medialab-Prado]

We're a week into our project here at Database City and I thought I'd provide a snapshot of the work in progress. I'm working as part of a team headed by Nerea Calvillo a Madrid-based architect. Our project is entitled In the Air and we're developing a real time visualization of air pollution in downtown Madrid.

Like most major cities, Madrid maintains a network of sensors distributed throughout the city at key intersections, cultural districts and industrial areas. These sensors monitor the levels of numerous chemicals including Carbon Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, aerial particulate and pollen levels in order to track the quality of the air. We've obtained 12 months worth of data collected by this network and have set up a means to scrape real time updates (the system updates hourly) - we're in the midst of investigating a few strategies for potential visualization. Pictured above is an interface mockup of a particle system we've developed in Processing that registers these sensors as attractors, things get a bit tricky with this strategy as it is more of a model than a true visualization. We're currently leaning towards a particle system approach with an option to isolate the data at a sensor-by-sensor level - the only sites the data is accurate. Last week Santiago Ortiz quipped that the goal of our project is interpolation without lies.

As if the visualization wasn't enough to keep us busy, we're also working on an physical prototype to speculate how this information could be communicated in some kind of installation or architectural context. The above video documents some of the experiments Susanna Tesconi and Nerea conducted last week. Nerea had originally envisioned a "diffusing facade" with Arduino-controlled mysters generating colour coded clouds to convey the levels of specific pollutants in the Madrid atmosphere. So far things haven't worked out with coloured dyes but we'll see where our research leads us. We're hoping to pull off a small scale "proof of concept" prototype and communicate how the system could be more ambitiously deployed through drawing. All of this is a very tall order for a two week project, luckily we've got a cast of thousands that also includes Carlota Pascual, Guillermo Ramírez, Miguel Vidal, Paco González, Raphaël de Staël, Sandra Fernández and Victor Viña.

I'll post about the project again next week - it will be interesting to see how it fills out. For anybody that is interested, we're updating our (mostly Spanish) project wiki daily.