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Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on an empirical case study in which the designer-researcher was employed by an EU research project to enrol people to use environmental sensing devices in the context of Heathrow airport. In addition to his official role, the designer-researcher also acted as a participant observer, that could intervene in the case study by creating a range of alternative design prototypes with locals opposed to the expansion of the airport. These prototypes were functioning sensing devices, that materially articulated alternative modalities of noise as political affects. The devices functioned to both support and challenge the local residents, in terms of what and how to sense and who to hold responsible for environmental problems. Rather than building consensus, the devices functioned as pivot points for crystallising positions amongst the local residents. The paper explores the notion of 'experimental political ontology' by Marres (2013), which proposes investing non-humans with political capacities in order to disrupt established ontologies. Thus this paper proposes the potential for a broader methodology of designing experimental devices in parallel with official technologies which can create productive frictions that open up the black boxes of technical/affective controversies such as environmental data practices. The position of the designer as ethnographer brings together the designer's fluidity of manipulating material scripts, with an actor-network sensibility towards ethnography.

Marres, N. (2013), 'Why political ontology must be experimentalized: On eco-show homes as devices of participation', Social Studies of Science 43(3), 417-443.