Paper short abstract:

The air it is built as a matter of concern through maps and visualisations, so artistic and design practices can contribute to expand scientific notions of the air and the toxic, to recognize other modes of knowledge production and to transform forecasts in speculative forms of worldmaking.

Paper long abstract:

Making the atmosphere visible has been, since Boyle, a scientific endeavour to better understand the climate and more lately, climate change, involving sensing instruments, experimental bodies and institutional networks. Since the late 80s air pollution maps and visualisations have become essential tools to render the air accountable to governments and citizens. And yet, visualisations of the air, air pollution and other topics related to climate change have had difficulties in addressing citizen's and policy maker's imagination.

This paper unfolds how the air it is built as a matter of concern through the devices that render it visible. By describing some existing maps and models of Madrid´s air, including some visualisations developed by this author through collaborative research in non-academic contexts, different aerial material-social-political landscapes of the city will emerge, according to what, who and how describes these aerial conditions. Drawing mostly on science and technology studies and non-representational cartography literature, it attempts to provide three preliminary contributions: to acknowledge the role of maps and visualisations in the production of airscapes; to recognize how air pollution is becoming part of weather forecast and distances from climate change concerns, and to detect how air pollution maps condition our daily practices in the urban space.

To conclude, the paper proposes that artistic and design practices and projects can contribute to expand scientific notions of the air and the toxic, to recognize other modes of knowledge production, alternative strategies to engage with the air and, eventually, to produce its public image through atmospheric imaginaries.