Mutual Air

This project emerged from an artist-in-residence appointment at the Exploratorium, a community museum dedicated to awareness, located in San Francisco. Mutual Air is a distributed ambient sculpture. Thirty networked bells installed throughout Oakland work to display disparities (and unities) in air quality across the city. Each bell is a self-contained, solar powered kinetic sculpture that reacts to global C02 data and hyperlocal measurements of particulate matter. Together they work to produce an ambient soundscape layering information about the moment to moment content of the air into everyday experiences. Individuals and institutions sign up to "host" bells in areas with dynamic air quality.

In conjunction with the public sculpture, four short films about the logistics and politics of measurement screen in the Exploratorium's Bay Observatory.

Mutual Air is a project by Rosten Woo and the Exploratorium with key partnerships and cooperation from the Oakland Museum of California, Chabot Space and Science Center, City of Oakland Public Art Program and Cultural Affairs Division, and the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. Mutual Air is generously supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s Open Spaces Program. IoT platform in-kind support provided by Particle.