Making breathable worlds through citizen engagement

Modern environments are awash with pollutants. The book Citizens of Worlds is the first thorough study of the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies to monitor and respond to air pollution. Drawing on data from the Citizen Sense research group, which worked with communities in the US and the UK to develop digital-sensor toolkits, author Jennifer Gabrys argues that citizen sensing promises positive change—and also collides with entrenched power structures. 

What are worlds? Who can do environmental monitoring? How might different means of computation tell a more complete story about pollution and its effects? In this episode, Jennifer talks with Helen Pritchard about Citizen Sense’s collaborative research in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeast and central London.

Jennifer Gabrys is chair in Media, Culture, and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She leads the Planetary Praxis group, and Citizen Sense and AirKit projects. Her books include Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle; How to Do Things with Sensors; and Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. Her work can be found at planetarypraxis.org and jennifergabrys.net.

Helen Pritchard is professor and head of research at IXDM (Institute for Experimental Design and Media Cultures) at the HGK in Basel. Helen is an artist-designer, member of Citizen Sense, co-organizer of The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, and a contributor to Critical Media Lab. More info: helenpritchard.info.

Citizen Sense is a research initiative funded by the European Research Council that investigates the relationship between technologies and practices of environmental sensing and citizen engagement. More info: citizensense.net. 

The book Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle is an open-access title, available to read for free at: manifold.umn.edu/projects/citizens-of-worlds

Episode citations and references include:

Alfred North Whitehead on breathing, subjects and worlds

Frantz Fanon on combat breathing

Open Air

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Lauren Berlant

Heather Love / Feeling Backward

Episode Transcript

Helen Pritchard (00:07):
What might it mean to be doing this research
when you're not part of GoogleArts and Culture Lab and
actually when you're resistingthat?

Jennifer Gabrys (00:16):
This issue of who is authorized to monitor
environments gets to, I think,the larger issue of how much the
citizen sensing can disruptthese usual power structures.
Hello. I'm Jennifer Gabries,author of Citizens of Worlds,
Open Air Toolkits forEnvironmental Struggle,

(00:38):
published with the University ofMinnesota Press in November
2022. I'm delighted to be hereas part of the University of
Minnesota Press podcast todaywith Helen Pritchard. I'm also
professor in the department ofsociology at the University of
Cambridge.
And today, I'll be discussingwith Helen, who's a member of
the Citizen Sense project, ourcollaborative work from the

(01:01):
Citizen Sense research. CitizenSense is a research initiative
that began ten years ago inearly twenty thirteen with the
aid of European Research Councilfunding. The project creatively
investigates how citizens arebeginning to use digitally
enabled sensors to monitor theirenvironments. We focused
especially on air qualitysensing and worked with

(01:23):
communities to test, build, setup, troubleshoot, and question
how sensors and sensor data canhelp or hinder efforts to
improve environmentalconditions. Citizens of Worlds
was written almost ten yearsafter the start of this practice
based and participatory researchto reflect on the project, to

(01:43):
bring together a sprawling setof project materials, including
on the Manifold platform withUniversity of Minnesota Press,
and to identify possibletrajectories toward ongoing
research at the intersection ofdigital, social, and
environmental justice.
Helen, thanks so much forjoining me in this conversation
today. I'll let you introduceyourself before we begin to have

(02:05):
a more detailed conversation ofthe book.

Helen Pritchard (02:08):
Hi, Jennifer. It's really, fantastic to be in
this space together today, andI'm really looking forward to
having some time to talk aboutthe book and your work. So I'm
Helen Pritchard, and I'm basedat IXDM, the Institute for
Experimental Design and MediaCulture at the HagerKah in
Basel, which is part of the FHNWUniversity of Applied Arts and

(02:29):
Sciences in NorthwesternSwitzerland. And I'm a professor
and the head of research therein IxDM where I contribute to
the Critical Media Lab andHyperWork. I also, as an artist
and designer, I co organizetogether with two different
groups, the Regenerative EnergyCommunities Project and the
Institute for Technology in thePublic Interest.
And since 2013, been working, aspart of Citizen Sense together

(02:54):
with Jennifer.

Jennifer Gabrys (02:55):
So it's really great to be having this
conversation with you todaybecause we collaborated for so
long on this project and becauseof your incredible background in
creative practice,participation, and digital
social research, really. Sothere's just so many possible
threads that we could pick up inthis collaborative work as well

(03:15):
as the the book itself.Hopefully, we'll be able to kind
of contain it within the spaceof a kind of reasonable podcast
length. But I think we weregonna start with this concept of
how to make breathable worldsthat comes up in the the
introduction to Citizens ofWorlds. Here's something where I
think a lot of our conversationswhen we were collaborating were

(03:36):
about DIY technologies andinstructions and forums and
tutorials.
So the how to really came up asthis recurring format that we
noticed in sensor spaces. Idon't know if you want to sort
of mention anything about thehow to and instructions more
broadly as as part of working onthis practice based work.

Helen Pritchard (03:57):
Yeah. I mean, if I think back to especially
the early days with CitizenSense when we were almost in a
kind of sedimented of, like,stacks of how to instructions,
manuals, videos, protocols. Youknow, the office was kind of
full of this detritus of how tokits that in some ways, it
almost could feel like the howto was in a way of many of the

(04:20):
different groups that we wereengaging with and the different,
technologists who were workingon some of those how tos at the
time, that they almost couldhave a kind of techno
solutionist paradigm. Like, thehow to in a way was the kind of
space of in a way of the techbros in some ways in that kind
of area of citizen science andcitizen sensing. When I think

(04:40):
about the kind of citizen senseproject and especially during
the time when we were intenselyworking together, the way in
which the work really allowed tobring up a kind of feminist
practice or a trans feministpractice of working with citizen
sensing and with all these howtos that were surrounding us.
And I was thinking when readingthe book and, thinking about the

(05:02):
concept of how to makebreathable worlds that you bring
to us in that. And I was sointerested in a way because in
some ways, I think like, I wasamazed in a way the way in which
you could make the how to thisexpansive space in which you
could take it from being,something that was a kind of
instructional space in which iskind of a thing that was kind of
circulated in particular ways tothen extending it to really

(05:25):
think about in in a way thatcould propose, I guess, another
type of political arrangement,set of practices, types of
engagements. And so I waswondering, really, in a way, at
what point did the how to makebreathable worlds emerge for you
in the project? Because in someways, we were, of course,
through the project, thinkingabout air and breathing and

(05:47):
breath, and that was somethingvery present. More so air,
right, than breathing in somemoments.
And so I was wondering at whatpoint it started to open up in
that way for you.

Jennifer Gabrys (05:56):
Yes. I think this is a really interesting
question because the how to isan organizing logic and practice
for the book. So Citizens ofWorlds is really organized as a
how to guide, but it doesattempt to disrupt the logic of
the how to by actually passingthrough it. And here's where I
draw on a whole range of,different approaches,
pragmatism, practice basedtheory, and participation, to

(06:20):
think about how followinginstructions rarely goes
according to plan. And that'ssomething that really we found
through our own practice basedresearch.
We would have a set of whatseemed like quite quite
straightforward instructions forhow to set up a sensor, and it
would rarely actually come tofruition in that way. Or we
would have a clear plan for howto set up sensors in

(06:42):
communities, and then a wholeset of other issues would come
up to be troubleshooted. Buthere's where I think because we
were monitoring air quality andthinking about air as not just
this sort of biologicalrelation, which is often
discussed as though, breathingis a kind of universal thing
that everybody shares. Everybodyhas to breathe. Everybody has to

(07:05):
sort of take in air tofacilitate the work that their
bodies do.
And I think this was somethingthat I was aware from the very
start. A lot of the work inhuman computer interaction was
looking at air and breathing,kind of even more than ten years
ago. And, of course, breathingwas coming up in in some of the
social, political, and policyspaces of the right to breathe.

(07:26):
And I was seeing that there weremore people writing about
breathing. And in Program Earthin 2016, I was actually engaging
with some work, from AlfredNorth Whitehead who talks about
when you're breathing, it's hardto tell where a subject begins
and ends in relation to anenvironment.
I thought, well, that's actuallyquite an interesting way to push

(07:46):
the concept of breathing and thepractice of breathing, not just
as organs, in a kind ofessential and universal work
that bodies do as though bodiesare undifferentiated, but
instead is about a kind ofenvironmental relation that's
making subjects and makingworlds. And so this is where the
kind of how to make breathableworlds really started to emerge

(08:09):
out of that work in 2016, butthrough our practice. And this
is where the practice basedresearch really was a space of
theorizing as much as practicingand thinking about what it would
mean for people to be able tomake worlds in which they can
breathe in all the differentregisters of breathing, not just
as taking in air as a kind ofinvoluntary steady act, but also

(08:33):
as an ability to extendourselves, in ways that can make
worlds, that can make worlds inwhich we can flourish, that can
make worlds in which productiveexchange is possible. And that
also potentially are sites wherebreathing becomes a form of
combat, as Frantz Fanonsuggests, to try to sustain or

(08:57):
endure particular conditionsworking toward a kind of
transformation.
And once I started to reallyfollow through with this idea
and look at some of theliterature literature that, you
know, in some cases is goingback now fifty, sixty, seventy
years or more, there really wasquite a kind of productive way
of thinking about breathabilityas something more than just that

(09:19):
root exchange. And I think thisresonated very much with the how
to and that attempt to open upthe how to as something more
than a straightforward exchangeor practice, but something that
was really giving rise to openair relations. And this is why
the open air is an importantpart of how that is
conceptualized to think aboutexchanges and intensities that

(09:40):
are taking place withinenvironments, within spaces
where subjects are coming intobeing through attempting to
survive and flourish, in theirenvironment. So, yes, that's
that's the kind of how to andhow that that came together with
breathability. But I think onceI started to assemble a possible
list of how to topics that wouldbe relevant for citizen sensing,

(10:02):
really, it's a kind of endlesslist, and it was difficult to
really think about where tocontain it.
But how to make breathableworlds seem to be the most
recurring concept and, recurringapproach that could make sense
of and help to sort of extend,the work in in many different
ways.

Helen Pritchard (10:19):
Yeah. I mean, I was I was very interested in the
way in which you also, throughthe the practices, think through
also what it might mean to be inthe conditions or in this, you I
think from Fanon used the termof occupied breathing. And I was
interested to to know in in someways to what extent, and you
write about this as well, thatthe kind of the fossil fuel

(10:40):
conditions or the conditions ofhyper capitalism, you know, are
themselves a type of kind ofoccupied breathing.

Jennifer Gabrys (10:48):
Yes. Absolutely. I mean, there's
there's so much to unpack therein terms of how breathing is
shaped into particular projectsand logics because of
environmental, social,political, economic conditions.
And, of course, we saw this inso many of the different sites
that we were in. The Citizens ofWorld's book has three main case

(11:10):
studies or project areas, wherewe were working in spaces,
including Pennsylvania, inrelation to fracking
infrastructure.
We were working in SoutheastLondon in relation to general
kind of urban conditions of ofpollution. And then also in the
center of London, where attemptswere made to mitigate air

(11:30):
pollution through air qualitygardens. And I think of each of
these, we could look at asdifferent cases of occupied
breathing in a sense, of course,not to conflate all these
different forms of ofoccupation, but to really think
through what are the particularsocial, political, economic
conditions that people arebreathing with and through? How

(11:52):
might they be attempting toreshape or push against or
resist those conditions? How isbreathing then part of a kind of
political extension of becomingparticular kinds of citizen
subjects?
So this is where breathing,again, didn't just collapse into

(12:12):
a biological function, butreally became part of a social
political project ofunderstanding what does it mean
to sustain oneself, to sustaincollectives, to try to remake
the conditions in which one, isundertaking projects of survival
and and and hopefully more. AndI think this is something that

(12:33):
we saw in different ways withpeople feeling, in some cases,
quite encroached upon byindustry and extraction and,
development, also beingdisplaced from their
environments, feeling that theycouldn't stay in environments
because of pollution ordevelopment. So many of the
conditions of breathabilityweren't just about there being

(12:56):
high levels of air pollution,which we found in many cases,
but were about people feelingthat they couldn't actually
continue on as they were inthose conditions in which they
were attempting, to get by. Andso I think there is something
there in that notion of occupiedreading, of course, written in
relation to different conditionsand and different time, but

(13:18):
still resonant in a parallel wayfor, I think, this expanded way
of thinking about breathability.So I take a lot from that,
hopefully, without trying tocollapse it within these other
sites, but to really thinkproductively then about how how
do people resist?
What kinds of citizen subjectsdo they become? Do they actually
manage to realize conditions ofbreathability? And if not, why

(13:42):
not?

Helen Pritchard (13:44):
And that's something I think in a way
that's almost the mundane thatyou point to in the book or the
way in which resistance andstruggle and the limiting of
breathable worlds actuallybecomes this kind of, like,
everyday struggle, everydayresistance, which doesn't make
it any less of a struggle. Ithink you describe it as this
kind of, like, the dailypulsations or very much as kind

(14:07):
of, like, this continuouscondition that many of the
people who we work with in a waywere within in terms of the
atmospheres and the the thepollution that they were being
exposed to. Becausebreathability and making
breathable wells, like, renderedas these kind of, like, daily
pulsations, and then what doesit mean to kind of have these
kind of, like, daily practicesof resistance to them and the

(14:30):
way in which through practicebased research, like many of
those practices, you know, theytake a long time. They're often
inhabiting and and being withinthose kind of community
practices, which sometimes mightamount to nothing, but it's
still part of a kind of what itmight mean to make an otherwise,
to make a resistance, much like,I guess, in some of the work

(14:51):
that you draw on as well, thekind of abolitionist proposal,
right, of these small everydayacts of resistance.
And that some of them, that kindof, like, the mundane or the
everyday or the daily pulsationis very different to the glossy
devices and this kind of, like,figures of, like, citizen
science or citizen sensing orsmart cities in which the techno

(15:11):
science is gonna be the kind ofinstant answer to a set of
relations that are alreadypredetermined because they're
made in particular situations orthey're coming from, you know,
maybe particular idea ofrelations as formed through,
like, human computer interactionscenarios in some ways. And I
and when I think about the workthat we did in Pennsylvania or
in South London, and especiallyin Newcross and Deptford, you

(15:33):
know, it's really on ourdoorstep. So we were working in
the office in Goldsmiths. It wasvery much those kind of small
everyday acts together withpeople that actually looked very
different to, I think, in someways, a lot of the imaginaries
around what sensing might do orwhat kind of, like, smart cities
monitoring pollution might do orwhat these kind of
infrastructures might provide.And I guess as well, I was

(15:56):
thinking in terms of the MakingBreathable Worlds, also, you're
drawing on the work of AlexisPauline Gumbs and and also what
it might mean in terms of thepoetry of Making Breathable
Worlds and how that's alsoemerging in the book and in your
work as well.

Jennifer Gabrys (16:11):
Yes. Well, there's there's a lot to, pick
up on there, and I think thisnotion of the daily pulsations,
which you you flag in relationto the introduction, is an
interesting one vis a vis Fanonbecause there's another way of
perversely reading that inrelation to sensor data and how
the assumption with sensors isthat monitoring will take place

(16:33):
almost for a kind of collapsedperiod of time. Time doesn't
figure in that promise of the ofthe technology, and the kind of
political environmental solutionwill be realized through the
monitoring. And this is what Ithink we found through the
practice based research andthrough deploying sensors and
through, attending to the dataand attending to people's

(16:54):
concerns, having to reallyinhabit those daily pulsations
and to understand what peoplewere flagging in response to
what was happening in theirenvironments, their own sorts of
struggles that might be takingplace in relation to planning
applications or development orother events that might be
underway with industry, andtheir struggles in what might be

(17:15):
community forum spaces or townhall meetings, and how the
sensor data then becameinterwoven with these daily
pulsations. And it wasn't justthis kind of immediate solution
or outcome that transformed thepolitical, or environmental
landscape, but was somethingthat was being logged along with

(17:37):
these other, daily pulsations.
There was something that wasquite interesting and demanding
about that. You know, theremight be times when there were
spikes in the data for a wholevariety of reasons, and then we
would be sort of called upon bycommunity members to to look at
the data and to sort of explainand understand what was going
on, or where sensor data wasbeing called up and presented at

(18:01):
town hall meetings and being,shown as proof of pollution and
then being brought into thosespaces to try to justify, what
was going on in thesepluralistic, I suppose, daily
pulsations because it there werea whole set of struggles of
sensor readings, of sensor data,and of attempts to really make

(18:21):
more breathable worlds, thatwere all sort of folding in
together. And it's quite, youknow, then a challenging form of
of research to engage in becauseit's not just participation in
the sense of asking someone todo a kind of focus group or a
consultation of some kind. It'sa participation that is a kind
of inhabitation of living withand alongside of actually going

(18:42):
out to polluted sites and,experiencing that pollution,
understanding people's concerns,and really living also with the
the sensors and sensor data,trying to join up many of these
observations also to kind ofunderstand what would an
effectiveness look like here.
If that's what sensors arepromising, is it simply a sensor

(19:03):
data reading that says thatpollution is above a regulatory
threshold, or does it requiremore than that? So there is
something about this notion ofdaily pulsation that is also
accumulative, and this isperhaps where to get to Gums
where breathability is as avector of transformation and
inhabitation, but it also is akind of accumulation, and all

(19:26):
sorts of things are beingaccumulated and can lead to
those demands and needs forstruggle and and ongoing sorts
of violence that people might beenduring, but also can become
vectors for transformation. Sothere there's something
interesting about reading thatwork alongside the work that we
were doing as a way to thinkthrough the practice and and to

(19:50):
hopefully more thoroughly andeffectively reflect on that and
think about what would it looklike for people to be able to
use the sensor, data in, waysthat could have an effect. And
is it just the sensor data?Because that's how it's
presented.
But, of course, as as we soonfound out, that's just one of
many components, in how peopletry to put pressure on various

(20:11):
regulators, industry, and eachother to try to realize change.
So I think this notion of dailypulsations is is an interesting
one to weave then into theconditions of breathability and
how that might transform. But Ithink here, you know, also just
to ask you as someone working onthe project and, you know, very
much a part of these ongoingattempts to keep the sensors

(20:32):
working, to join up communityconcerns, to participate in
workshops, how you would narratethis space of breathability
through the the kind ofstruggles that, you know, you
noticed in communities and howyou felt I don't know if
positioned is the right word,but, involved as a researcher in
making that research. Because,of course, it transforms people

(20:55):
not only as citizen subjects,but it transforms us as
researchers. And this issomething that you wrote about,
in an article we put together in2016 is, you know, what does it
mean to be affected by theseproblems and to have to respond
to them?
What kind of research comes outof this struggle? How does this
transform the conditions ofdoing research altogether?

Helen Pritchard (21:15):
Yeah. I think there's something around how to
make breathable worlds that interms of the transformation
possibilities that I was part ofin a certain sense in terms of
what it meant to enter into thatcommitment with others, with the
communities that we were workingwith, with the people we were
working with. And in a way and Iand I think that's also the way,

(21:36):
of course, in which you takethat concept up in the book and
mobilize it is that the how tomake breathable worlds was never
a kind of cookie cutter answerin any way in terms of the
conversations that we werehaving, the commitments that we
were making together, thetransformations or the impacts
or effects that we wanted to getclose to, as the collective of

(21:56):
of researchers who are workingon it both within the team, but
also within when I talk aboutthe kind of collective of
researchers, you know,researchers, you know, really
the communities who we workedwith were really our
coresearchers in this project.And in a way, I think, you know,
part of the how to makebreathable worlds, what I
experienced in the project isreally how to make collective
research possible in ways thatkind of actually can leave

(22:19):
spaces for it to be pluralistic,I guess.
I don't know if you would agreethat that's a condition of that
research, but in some ways, youknow, actually, also the kind of
how to make breathable worlds inthe way emerged, I think, often
as in many things that perhapsdidn't work out or were kind of
small experiments towardssomething. And that the
commitment wasn't necessarily toalways be solving something, yet

(22:42):
always, of course, to beengaging with the problems which
were being brought to the tableand those concerns that were
being brought to the table. AndI think that that's a very, very
different type of practice, avery different type of research,
and also activist practice thana way in which citizen science
or citizen sensing or a technoscience research might be set up
in which there needs to be akind of singular narrative,

(23:05):
right, of the relations thatpeople are gonna come into.
There needs to be a particularset of computational
infrastructures that thoseresearchers are engaging with
and maybe even sometimespromoting to these communities.
And in a way, I think part ofthe practice based research in a
way emerged in citizen sense andthat you made space for Jennifer
is really actually like, whatmight it mean to be doing this

(23:26):
research when you're not part ofGoogle Arts and Culture Lab and
actually when you're resistingthat or when you're not kind of
actually assigned to a militarycontract, which is asking you to
test a particular machinelearning algorithm that you need
to kind of basically washtogether with communities on an
air quality project?
You know, we were reallyactually, like, what does it
mean together with people whohave concerns about air quality

(23:48):
to take up these practicestogether in ways which then
might be able to, I don't know,make impacts or even to be able
to just engage with what washappening. Like, I really think
that's why I kinda was pickingup on that daily pulsation
because I think in a way, we dida lot of work to really often
try to resist the silver bulletquestion or this idea that we
would be solving the issue ofair quality in Southeast London,

(24:11):
for example. It was somethingthat we often were repeating.
And in a way, I think that's,like, a big part of it, what it
means to unlearn in a way,unlearn together that
something's gonna be solved bygoing in and doing those
practices. Because I think maybethat sometimes if we were to be
critical of practice basedresearch, it often might set
itself up with something to besolved.
And so perhaps the how to makebreathable worlds is not letting

(24:33):
go of the fact that there arethings that we want
transformational change about,and there are kind of other
types of political arrangementsthat we desire and we have,
like, effective attachments to,but that they might not be
overdetermined or there mightnot be a kind of easy way to
solve them. And so really when Iwas reading the book, I was
really felt like I wasreinhabiting in some ways all of

(24:54):
these different kind ofpluralities around, like, what
does it mean to make thesebreathable worlds? There's not a
kind of framework or a set ofprinciples that's gonna be, able
to be produced.

Jennifer Gabrys (25:06):
Yes. I think that's right, and it's a very
apt way of characterizing thehow to, which is usually
organized toward solutionism,could still be working toward,
as you said, transformationalchange, but not in a way that is
clear, straightforward,prescriptive, or necessarily
even going to arrive at theoutcomes that people expected or

(25:29):
hoped for. And this was, Ithink, a real challenge in
undertaking this collectiveresearch because people did want
to affect change, but none of usnecessarily knew what that was
going to look like. And it's aquestion that I'm often asked.
So did this realize any sort ofimpact or output?
And, you know, of course, therewere things that were realized,

(25:51):
in Pennsylvania. Some federalregulators picked up the
findings and did a follow onsensor study and basically had
very similar findings and thenasked the state to take various
measures to mitigate airpollution and to work with
industry to do this, which thenled to an expansion of the air

(26:11):
quality network in Pennsylvania.There was a kind of an effect.
There was a kind of outcome thatthe community was pleased with
with on one level because theyfelt their voices had been
heard. But there was a kind ofbroader question, I think, still
of, is this a kind of breathableworld when regulatory
infrastructure has expanded butpollution potentially continues.

(26:32):
So that's to kind of show howthese really can be quite
iterative, ongoing, as you said,daily attempts to affect change
that aren't this kind ofstraightforward realization of
of a solution, and then it's theend of the project and the the
end of the pursuit as it were.And that's what's kind of

(26:52):
curious about the way that manyof these digital technologies
are packaged and and sold soldboth literally and sold as a
kind of promissory project ofbeing a kind of instrument that
will clean up a kind of problemthat will sort out a kind of
issue because politics havebecome too thorny or too
impossible as a means forrealizing that change. And so

(27:15):
the technology has to sort oftake the place of that social
political engagement. But whatwe found was actually quite the
opposite. As the technology justbecomes a different vector
through which to undertakepractices.
It can differently gather setsof concerns. It can generate
things like data, but none ofthat alone is going to realize a

(27:36):
final definitive outcome. Evenif you have a determination that
air pollution is occurring, youthen need changes to occur in
industry practice andinfrastructure and larger
systems of fossil fuelextraction and even sort of
economic growth. So there's somany levels and layers to how
this collective research wouldthen take place. But I think

(27:57):
this is where it, you know, itwas interesting how we moved
from a space of doingparticipatory, practice based
and collective research to thisspace of activism that in some
ways felt like a label appliedto the research as much as
something that we deliberatelyset out to do.

(28:18):
And this is, I think, in partbecause, you know, our first
project area was in Pennsylvaniawhere activism was a term that
communities in some cases weredisavowing because they wanted
to be taken seriously bypolicymakers. They were
disavowing it because people whowere more openly fractivist were
ending up on FBI watch lists,and it was a term that people

(28:40):
sort of danced around. But thenit was a term that was also
applied to us as a label that wedidn't necessarily set out
within the first instance. So Iwonder if you want to say
anything about these dances withthe term activism, the concept
activism, the practice ofactivism, and how, you know, on
one level, it can be a way tocharacterize research, but also

(29:04):
context dependent, in relationto communities and the struggles
that they're undertaking. It canalso be something that people
try to sidestep or can be a termthat's used to denigrate or even
dismiss academic research.
If it's labeled as activist,then it's seen to be not
objective, for instance. Soactivism is something that kind

(29:24):
of emerges in all of thesepluralistic ways, and it's
something that we wereattempting to wrestle with. And
maybe this is where it would benice to hear from you, a kind of
anecdote about how inPennsylvania this activism label
was something that led to quiteinteresting skirmishes in the
field.

Helen Pritchard (29:45):
Yeah. I mean, I could talk about that. I also
think about how in some waysthere's a kind of queer activism
really present in this projectand also in the way in which we
understand or got to understandour own activist practices and
our own positions with that.Because, you know, in some ways,
if I I think about the work ofLauren Berlant or, like Heather

(30:07):
Love in Feeling Backwards,right, this idea of a kind of
political or activist practice,which might not be a form of
direct action. It might alsoinvolve, like, crying, sleeping,
being depressed, like, all thesekind of slow forms.
And the way in which as wellLauren Berlant writes about that
kind of magnetism that peoplehave towards things in which

(30:27):
they might have very, like,different attachments, which is
in many ways, I think, also howthe practice of citizen sensing
brought people together in theproject, especially in
Pennsylvania, right, withdifferent forms of attachment to
that and different types ofpolitical positions, different
types of political positions,different types of friendships
and relations, different typesof, conflicts as well between

(30:49):
them. And I guess also, like,different attachments to what
that knowledge practice might beand who could be the expert in
that space. And so one of thethings, which I think, Jennifer,
you're bringing up here that wefound ourselves susceptible not
susceptible to, but I guess waskind of put upon us, very often
was this question of, are youexpert enough to be doing this

(31:12):
research, this pollutionmonitoring? Are you from a kind
of validated scientific labwhose equipment, devices, and so
on are valid enough and expertenough to be used in this space?
And it started to kind ofunravel in a way that it was a
very protected space actually ofwho would be able to do
monitoring there, especially ifonce the data started to

(31:33):
actually perhaps have someresonance with people's
experiences on the ground.
So we were kind of I think atfirst, things were less
combative, let's say, when wewere in the field and
monitoring. And then I guesskind of halfway through the
monitoring that we were doing inPennsylvania, the anxiety in a
way that at the federal level orthe state level or those who

(31:54):
might not want people to bemonitoring the potential of
pollution in those spacesstarted to arise. And one of
those things was the interest inFox News in the data that was
being produced. Fox News hadbeen contacting as many people
as they could who they thoughtmight be working as part of this
citizen monitoring group. Someof the people were quite
publicly sharing their data indifferent things like town hall

(32:16):
meetings, and other people wereanonymously participating.
And so they were really tryingto find out where we were, who
we were, and also they had thisnarrative that we were spreading
that they were going to test thevalidity of our devices, I
think, if I remember rightly.When they were gonna prove that
these researchers from London,from the citizen sense, were

(32:37):
fraudulent, actually. I thinkthis was a kind of narrative.
One time, I I'd returned backfrom a meeting with somebody to
the hotel in which I was stayingin. And at that point, I think
that the the person in the hotelfor some reason, I'm not sure
why she had a moment, I guess,of perhaps thinking she
shouldn't have disclosed whatshe had.
And she she said to me, Fox Newsrang. They were ringing

(32:59):
everywhere, and I told them youwere staying here. They're gonna
come at daylight, and they wantto, like, ambush you in the car
park. And so for some reason,I'm not sure why because she
kind of confessed it to me thatthis was gonna happen. And so at
that point, we were also kind ofactually working with the, a
legal team actually atGoldsmiths also to think about
the licenses on the citizen databecause they also were quite

(33:21):
interested, to get hold of that.
So at that point, you know,there was this question of,
like, well, what am I gonna do?Where am I gonna go? And so we
kind of made this plan that Iwas gonna leave the hotel in
darkness to avoid this kind ofambush in the car park. But then
I had to I think I had to pickup some data or I had to meet
with somebody who I reallywanted to meet with for a long

(33:41):
time. So Jennifer and I madethis plan together.
The the one place where theywouldn't look for me would be,
the compressor station becausesome of the people we worked
with were also people who hadinfrastructure on their
properties, and they they'dgiven us the keys because we
were also monitoring there, andit was you know, we were
collaborating. So the place so Ithink at, like, four or five in
the morning, I drove to thecompressor station, and that was

(34:05):
where I kind of saw sunrise andhid out from Fox News. And at
that point, because, of course,when you're monitoring in these
situations as well, there's alsopeople who are working right in
these compressor stations. Andthey were there, and they made
me a cup of tea, and then wekind of had a chat. And then as
the space cleared, I kind ofmoved off and I think then kind
of made a a dash to a hotel inUpstate New York to avoid the

(34:27):
Fox News ambush.
And I think at which point, theyI think they tried to then do
some other interviews, and theywere always sending us updates.
So we've interviewed this andthis person, but they never
managed to launch a story, Idon't think. And I really think
that was also because, actually,the community members and and
one of the reasons that I wentto the compressor station is
also the person who owned itsaid, go there because I've not

(34:48):
given I haven't given thempermission to go on my land. So
they actually cannot interviewyou there or try and question
you there. So, I mean, I thinkthis is where that type of
Jennifer, the way you writeabout this co constituted
activism really starts to kindof emerge.
Right? Like, what it means tokind of do this work together.

Jennifer Gabrys (35:04):
Yes. It takes, I think, co constitution to a
whole other level, in a certainway. But this issue of who is
authorized to monitorenvironments and who's able to
really observe, document, andcommunicate this gets to, I
think, the larger issue of thekinds of power structures that

(35:26):
are very much bound up with howknowledge is generated,
circulated, and acted upon, andhow much the citizen sensing can
really potentially disrupt theseusual power structures, in
relation to environmentalknowledge, other forms of of
knowledge, and what kind of,entities then come in to try to

(35:50):
disrupt that process. And, ofcourse, this is just one of many
narratives of attempteddisruption. And I think we were
really, on a certain level, atleast I was surprised by the
level of attention that thecitizen monitoring was
attracting and the attempteddisruptions to that and the
various, kinds of interactionsthat we were finding ourselves

(36:14):
drawn into in these attempts toexplain the project.
In one case, I think we wereeven told we we should have
asked for permission toundertake the monitoring. A case
did later come up in Wyoming, Ithink it was on Bureau of Land
Management land, about whetherpeople could monitor, and that
was eventually protected as aform of, free speech. So these

(36:36):
these attempts to disrupt otherways of engaging with and and
knowing air quality, of knowingwhat's going on with
environmental change and ofcirculating that material, I
think, has been a kind ofinteresting way in which we've
come to understand that thekinds of action and activism
that we thought we might beengaged with, people thought
they might be engaged with,could also transform and develop

(36:59):
in other ways because of how themonitoring was understood by
other entities. And, you know,we even, I think, encountered
some interesting disagreementswithin political organizations,
at the state and federal level.There wasn't kind of agreement
across environmental health andand other entities about how or

(37:21):
whether to respond to citizenmonitoring, whether the data
could be seen to be legitimate.
And, of course, then one of theresponses was to do a parallel
follow-up study to try torecreate the findings in classic
scientific methods. And when thefindings were recreated, when a
pollution source that we hadidentified at comparable levels

(37:41):
of pollution were established,then that was seen to be a kind
of validation and verificationof the findings, but, the
findings weren't taken at facevalue in that first instance. So
that was quite interesting andreally made us think about how
we also built an infrastructurefor undertaking collective
research. Because throughoutthis whole process, we were then

(38:03):
tweaking the platforms that wedeveloped. We were creating a
further data analysis toolkit sothat communities could do DIY
data analysis.
We brought in a consultantatmospheric scientist, to be
able to have conversations andto learn about how to do
atmospheric science. We alsodeveloped a method of data
stories so that we could find away to bring in sensor data, in

(38:26):
some cases, officialenvironmental data, community
narratives, site observations,and proposals for action to
rethink the space of howmonitoring is undertaken, not
just as a a kind of officialdeclaration of air pollution
levels, often in the absencethen of of action, but to remake

(38:47):
that space through differenttypes of citizen observations,
different modalities of,environmental engagement that
might be organized towardenvironmental action. And I
suppose that's where a differentkind of activism comes up as
well, which is about rethinkingthe project of monitoring as one
that, for communities, is alwaysembedded in attempts to make

(39:11):
more breathable worlds. So it'smonitoring to try to identify
problems and to rework thoseconditions so that they're not
suffering from pollution, forinstance. And this is where I
think another kind of pluralismcame up in terms of the sorts of
data, the trajectories ofaction, and the possible ways of
transforming environments.

(39:31):
So, yes, there's something quiteinteresting there with the
attempted disruptions, but thenalso the kind of cascading of
different ways of undertakingobservation and having effects.
And those struggles and thoseconflicts then became part of
the collective research andbecame part of the way of
understanding what was at stakeand that sensors alone weren't

(39:52):
going to simply be able to tosolve the broader issues at play
in those environments.

Helen Pritchard (39:59):
Yeah. But, I mean, also when I think about
the work that we set up and alsothe infrastructures that we
built in terms of the OpenAirtoolkit or the OpenAir platform,
the dust boxes, all of thesensing kits, the the community
infrastructures, In some ways,you know, at the time, I think
there was really this also thiskind of emerging proposition,

(40:19):
right, of individuals kind ofquantifying their exposures or
quantifying their experiences ofpollution. And, also, the kind
of computational practices thatwere emerging around that were
really kind of designed forthat, for the individual or this
kind of idea of, like, anindividual digital sovereign or
something who, like, is kind of,turning the camera back on

(40:41):
themselves, you know,monitoring, collecting,
accumulating all this data,using these cloud services to do
that. And if I think about thekind of in some ways, we were
through the kind of collectiveinfrastructure that we set up
and actually the way in which weworked particularly with this
temporal and spatial monitoringthat was to get done together

(41:01):
with communities in which alsopeople would swap their devices,
would help each other to mapwhere their device would go.
So it wasn't necessarily even anindividual choice of where that
device would be. That in someways, we were always kind of
agitating, like, a number ofnormative things around what
monitoring is. Right? Not justso we were kind of agitating the

(41:22):
fracking companies and thefossil fuel companies. We were
agitating the department forenvironmental protection who
kind of saw that they should bein charge of monitoring.
We were agitating the kind ofexpert scientists. We were also,
I think, agitating the thosedesigners of, like, ubiquitous
computational environmentalmonitoring, things that really
were trying to kind of pushforward this very individual

(41:46):
practice of monitoring. And itreally this the the project
itself, right, always wasrejecting individual collecting
data about their exposure, abouttheir individual experience
would be able to lead totransformational change. And I
think at the time, I don't thinkI quite understood how it was
for us to be proposingcollective community based

(42:08):
infrastructures for the citizensensing monitoring. But,
actually, I think that that wasalso really, really a kind of
big part of that provocationthat was taking place.

Jennifer Gabrys (42:18):
Yes. And I I think this is really a central
observation. I didn't realize itwould be such an agitation
either, but in the process oftrying to follow through with
working with communities, butalso trying to do, the digital
otherwise, computing otherwise,which I think is a topic what
maybe will come up in a moment.But to really think about the

(42:40):
power structures, the promises,the usual ways of developing,
organizing, and installingtechnology, that if we thought
about this as a collectiveproject that was tuned toward a
certain kind of collectiveinquiry for making more
breathable worlds, we would bereally remaking the whole
diagram of technology and powerand possibility. And it's an

(43:05):
incredible amount of work, butit also can really start to
overturn many of the assumptionsabout technology and the
possible effects it might have.
And what was really quiteinteresting is how we were also
being agitated, I think, bycommunities to think about how
to make our projects accountableand to make the technology in a

(43:28):
way accessible and usable forthem so that they could do the
analysis they wanted to do anddemonstrate particular concerns.
So, you know, we were alsobeing, in a sense, held to
account and asked to reallythink about what these sensors
were doing and who they werefor. And it was interesting to
be in these spaces of reallytesting and opening up the

(43:49):
sensors and trying to thinkabout we how we could both
question them, but how we couldalso collect data that had a
level of accuracy andverifiability and could travel
in the world in ways that couldactually be put to different
kinds of uses. So that that, Ithink, was something that was
part of a real challenge of theproject because we were having

(44:09):
to make these infrastructuresreally on the fly in response to
emerging conditions and attemptsto make sense of the data as it
was being generated, to makesense of pollution conditions as
they were occurring, and torespond to challenges from
community members, from state,especially, level, governments,

(44:31):
and to industry, you know, who,obviously did disregard the data
as speculative and not sort ofaccurate.
But having to then think aboutbuilding an infrastructure that
could enable these collectiveforms of research and inquiry
that could respond to thesechallenges, and that could
become a kind of ongoing spaceof contribution and encounter

(44:53):
really is a particular way ofengaging with technology that
remakes the usual diagram of howtechnology is developed as
something that's usually withina space of big tech and large
funding and is then tested inuser groups, kind of quite
contained settings. The ethosand the objective of that

(45:13):
technology is meeting veryparticular interest and
concerns, and then it's rolledout for universal users to,
engage with whether it'srelevant or not and often
without thinking about thepossible harms that can be done
at that point of of circulatingin the world. And by really
working at the point oftechnology development in this

(45:34):
other way with communities, wewere really remaking that space
of what technology might be ableto generate as as part of this
larger project of of making morebreathable worlds. So I don't
know if here you want to alsotalk about some of your own work
on computing otherwise because Ithink this is really a a force
to be reckoned with in yourcurrent work, Helen, where

(45:56):
you're really taking thiscomputing otherwise into many
other spaces.

Helen Pritchard (46:02):
Yeah. I was thinking when you were saying
about this question of what themonitoring was for or what the
sensing was for, and in someways and you write about this,
and it's a key tenant of thebook as well in terms of
struggle. In some ways, I guess,a kind of computing practice is
not necessarily something thatis normally aligned with
struggle. Like, what does itmean to have a kind of computing

(46:24):
otherwise in which struggle ispart of that practice or the
building of solidarity acrossstruggles? You know, if I think
about the work in citizen senseas well, right, that was also
about a solidarity acrossdifferent struggles.
We always kept that in the room,and that's really not the kind
of, we might say, like, amainstream or dominant computer

(46:46):
science practice. Right? Youdon't keep the feminist struggle
in the room. You don't keep thequeer struggle in the room. You
don't keep, like, anti raciststruggle in the room.
You don't keep environmentalstruggles in the room together.
You know, there are, I thinkamazing projects happening in
computer science which do dothat, but which are often kind
of even not recognized ascomputer science or computing.

(47:07):
And I think that they are partof that kind of like, the
struggle for I don't know if wecould say, like, how to make a
computing otherwise, Jennifer.Right? Like, you know, it seems
like there are many people, andtogether with Wren Britain,
actually, we wrote this piece,and we've been doing this work
called four CS.
So four CS and using the kind ofacronym of computer science in
which we switch the CS fordifferent metaphors, such as

(47:31):
cushions and stargazing, cryingsabotage, chance and scandal.
But we are also using theproject to really try to kind of
also document and map differenttypes of projects which we see
have kind of affinities and aretrying to, like, come together
and create solidarities as astruggle to remake a computing
and remake it really, reallydifferently. And I think, you

(47:52):
know, in some ways, also thisquestion of, like, what is the
sensing for or who it's for, youknow, is also really present in
terms of where do we start onthese processes sometimes. And I
guess that if we had startedwith a kind of proposition of,
like, how to make morebreathable worlds, that probably
would have been a very differentand impossible kind of

(48:12):
proposition. But, actually,like, what does it mean to kind
of start with the struggles thatcommunities are facing and
concerned about, which wasreally the citizen sense
methodology.
Right? It was to look for and tothink about how to work together
across those struggles. And insome ways, like, I think that
that has really, really fed intothe work that we're doing with
the regenerative energycommunity project. And in that

(48:34):
project, we are trying to thinkabout what does it mean to think
about infrastructure if we startwith the soil. If we think
about, like, everything that wedo on that project needs to
somehow regenerate or benefitthe soil, and we're really
indebted to lots of the work inblack agroecology practices and
black expressive culture in thatproject.

(48:55):
But when you start with the kindof thinking it's for the soil,
actually, again, it's like avery, very different proposition
and sets of practices andinfrastructures that start to
emerge from that.

Jennifer Gabrys (49:05):
I mean, I think that gets to this interesting
question of what worlds are.Because here, the worlds are not
ones of technical circuitry, butrather are about soil and
regeneration in the case of yournew project. Or in the case of
the Citizen Sense project. Asyou mentioned, we were often
starting from within manydifferent community concerns and

(49:26):
issues having to do with housingand development and economic
and, other forms of displacementthat some people might see as
tangentially related to airquality and, as you mentioned,
completely sort of separate fromcomputation as it's usually
configured. But by having thisapproach of of thinking about

(49:47):
people as citizens of worlds asdifferently sort of engaged with
these struggles and that theseform conditions of interaction,
possibility, changing relations,and multiple different
approaches for how technologycould be put to work and and how
to transform environments.
This became a kind of way ofbringing together, I suppose, a

(50:08):
world's based approach thatisn't a container as such, but
rather is this set ofattractions and possibilities
for how to do computationotherwise. So I think this is
perhaps the next chapter of thiswork, which would be to explore
exactly this question, drawingon this work, drawing on, as you

(50:28):
mentioned, many parallelpractices and and ongoing work
that really tries to explore howto break with the the logic of
big tech, how to, develop otherpractices for being engaged
environmental citizens and howto rework this space of
citizenship through environmentexchanges that are about making
conditions of breathability. SoI think that this ideally is a

(50:52):
way of writing that is not justdocumenting a project, but
writing as a kind of practicefor opening up to other
possibilities and othercollaborations. So this is a
kind of pluralistic project thatis about transforming
conditions, but also pointing tothe next how to. Because with
any good, I suppose, pluralistprojects, you have to be

(51:12):
inviting more possibilities,even, those yet to come that
aren't yet part of the existingsort of study.
So I don't know if that's a goodplace to end, perhaps, how to do
computing otherwise as the nextchapter that is being written,
is yet to be written, andhopefully is a way that we could
come back together in morecollaborations that we have been

(51:35):
discussing. But I think, youknow, it's been a really
fascinating conversation andalso incredibly generative
collaboration over the last tenyears, and I really do hope
there's more to come inexploring the space of how to
compute otherwise.

Helen Pritchard (51:51):
Yeah. Thanks so much, Jennifer. And I think
yeah. Absolutely. It's kindagreat to think about actually
also what it meant to make thatspace, make the space, and hold
that space for this type of workto happen and how to make that
again.

Narrator (52:09):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book Citizens ofWorlds, Open Air Toolkits for
Environmental Struggle isavailable from University of
Minnesota Press. Thank you forlistening.