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https://www.wired.com/2014/07/a-clever-device-that-turns-polluted-air-into-art/
This is a slightly older project I remember reading about a couple of years ago. Dmitry Morozov lives in Moscow and uses air pollution to make glitch art. Morozov created a small portable blue-tooth device, with an attached fake nose, that ‘sniffs’ out air pollution and transforms air data from vehicular gasses into the various shapes and colour that make up his glitch art. In creating the technology, Morozov used various sensors that detected certain gaseous elements in the environment and unified them with a ‘nose’, so to my knowledge, the artist used “off-the-shelf” commercial software. Each image that is produced from the device can be essentially viewed as an artistic grading system for air quality. It would be interesting to see how the artwork produced today using the device would compare to that of 10 years or so in the future.
I found this piece of technological art particularly inspiring because it shows that there is no end to the possibilities that come through the arrangement of art and computational technology. If someone can transform air pollution into visually appealing art using technology, I wonder what other ‘regular’ things that exist out in the world can be used to make art.
The video below shows Morozov’s device in-action.