Challenge
To make the invisible visible and attract citizen scientists into a longitudinal air perception study to better understand peoples understanding and awareness of air pollution.
Pilot
O-Tu Kapu – The Personal Cloud, May/June 2016.
Te Uru Gallery with Green Bay Primary and Intermediate, Prospect Primary, Kura Kaupapa o Hoani Waititi and Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Kotuku and Titirangi Primary schools.
Children, now and in the future, will increasingly have to cope with the social and environmental impacts of climate change, yet they remain largely excluded from the dialogue about climate science. Personal Cloud employs visual arts and music to arouse curious minds to engage with climate change science.
230 students from Green Bay Primary and Intermediate, Prospect Primary, Kura Kaupapa o Hoani Waititi and Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Kotuku and Titirangi Primary schools, participated in the project pilot. During the workshops they learnt about the scientific qualities of air, made a personal cloud installed in the gallery and learnt a waiata which was recorded with the Play it Strange Bus Jam. The waiata can be heard here https://soundcloud.com/mercy-williams/he-ao. Knowledge gained in the pilot will inform the development of an educational app aimed at engaging young people in climate change science.
Team
F4 collective led by Marcus Williams Susan Jowsey
Life and art merge with this experimental collective: a family live and make art together, exploring the dynamics of familial structures, collective memory and interpersonal relationships. Growing from the long-term artistic collaboration between parents (Susan Jowsey and Marcus Williams) F4 is a conceptual and structural response to their children entering into and altering this partnership.
Marcus Williams is Dean of Research at Unitec; a practicing artist and founding member of the F4 Collective. Marcus has a cross-disciplinary art practice working in a wide range of media with a strong emphasis in photography. He makes artist’s books, video’s, photographic prints and Internet projects often combining these strategies into ‘total installations’. He has an enduring interest in collaboration and has collaborated with a wide range of artists in New Zealand and in Europe. Marcus has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Australia, UK, US, France, Italy, Austria, Estonia and Russia.
Susan Jowsey is a multimedia artist working with 3D objects, digital sculpture and animation, installation, moving image and photography. She lives in New Zealand but exhibits internationally. Her work is held in major collections throughout New Zealand. Jowsey’s work has a strong visual aesthetic, drawing predominantly on the abject and found objects of domestic origin. Jowsey traces with her fingers a map of dislocation, in an exploration of identity, the fabric of habit, trace and breath and the clothes of the senses.
Mercy Alberta Williams is a Year 12 student in the Rumaki at Nga Puna o Waiorea, Western Springs College. She is an award winning bilingual songwriter and will write and direct the performance of the climate change waiata for the Personal Cloud installation at Te Uru Gallery.
Gustavo Olivares is an air quality scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). Originally from Santiago (Chile), his background is in chemical engineering, with an early interest in air pollution and urban environments. Recent projects have dealt with the characterisation of aerosols from urban traffic and heating sources, developing low-cost instrumentation to empower communities and developing an integrated tool to evaluate the air quality outcomes of urban development.
Dr Guy Coulson is the NIWA Science Leader for air quality research. Guy has a PhD in atmospheric chemistry from the University of Essex and worked as a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Essex and as a consultant at Cambridge Consultants.
Dr Ian Longley leads the Atmospheric Environment, Health and Society programme. He has worked in air quality research at NIWA since 2007 before which he conducted research in aerosol micrometeorology at the University of Manchester. Ian is a specialist in air pollution exposure science and the air quality impact of the built environment.
Dr Elizabeth Somerville is an air quality scientist at NIWA. Her PhD is in Urban Air Quality, Elizabeth is currently working as an air quality modeller, with experience in urban micrometeorology, air pollution exposure science, air quality impacts of vehicle emissions, air quality field observations and air quality impact assessment.
Dr Claudio Aguayo is a Research Officer at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Auckland University of Technology. Claudio has a PhD in Education from the University of Waikato and a BSC in Biology, he is actively engaged in learning technologies, mobile learning, social media, online collaborative spaces, educational app development, education for sustainability, and community education. Claudio will lead the TEMP-air app team.
James Smith is a Communication Design tutor at Auckland University of Technology. James has been a Digital Media Producer for the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Auckland University of Technology, his research centres on designing virtual and augmented reality experience. James was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for Postgraduate Study at AUT and is a member of the TEMP-air app team.
