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Paper short abstract

Focusing on DIY making and noticing, this paper argues that air is made knowable through (non)human sensing practices. It explores how situated sense-making shapes—and is being shaped—through moments of uncertainty, negotiation, and shifting sensory attention.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, we explore how air can be made sense of—and known—with, through and alongside air sensors. Previous work attended to, for instance, “good enough” citizen air data (Gabrys et al., 2016), the calibration of DIY air sensors (Pritchard et al., 2018), and how pollution can be known through different forms of engagement beyond established air monitoring (Calvillo, 2018). We argue that assembling an air sensor kit already shapes the sense-making process before engaging with any sensor output. To do so, we created an air sensor kit, which we called Patchy Air. With Patchy Air, we explored DIY making (see Jungnickel, 2018) and noticing (see Tsing, 2020) as sense-making practices. We thus ask: How is air made knowable through situated sense-making practices in DIY air sensing?

While we collaborated on making the sensor kit and co-created knowledge throughout the process, the field notes are written and analysed by the first author. To highlight how situated sense-making informed how I came to know air, I drew on field notes, pictures, and the air sensor kit itself. Emerging themes highlight the material constraints, anticipations, and decisions on what counts as relevant to air sensing, which changed my sensory attention. Finally, our paper discusses how the DIY process—and sensing with, through, and alongside the air sensor kit—shifts our focus from the validity of air data to relating with the sensors, ourselves, and air itself.

Keywords: air, DIY air sensing, noticing, sense-making, autoethnography