Historically, Madrid’s air has been represented by its skies,
from Velázquez, who took the entire royal court outdoors
to paint their portrait,
to photography nuts who post their Madrid photos on Flickr.
This is the first image that shows up when you search "Madrid" on Flickr.
Still, even if this is how the Madrid sky appears
in our collective imagination,
on a day-to-day basis,
Madrid's sky looks like this
and like this
and like this.
And only those photos you see in the newspapers now and then,
can actually reveal the bad quality of air in Madrid.
It makes you wonder:
Why do we know so little about something like air quality?
And the answer is very simple -
because it's microscopic and we don't see it.
Thus, the "In The Air" project was born,
with the intention of giving legitimacy to a system
that forms a part of our city;
a system with which we interact,
that runs our daily lives,
and that has a very close relationship with our bodies.
The project is a collective effort,
built by a fantastic team of multidisciplinary collaborators
from all over the world,
and developed through workshops,
like Media Lab Prado in 2008, the first of such events.
But back to the air.
Allow me to present its actors:
gases like CO2, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide,
or suspended particulates like rubber, leather, lead...
Ever since Spain joined the European Union,
Madrid's city council is obligated to inform the public about air quality.
This is how they presented it in 2007,
and like this for 2008, 2010.
But it makes you wonder:
Could we find a more adequate way to present the information,
so we could have a better sense of what's going on with our air?
We found there were two things missing:
geolocalization and the order of events.
So we put together these graphic maps, which are basically air landscapes.
You can see them in real time on an interactive web page,
where you can view all the different components
and navigate the city from below its airstream.
We can also see what effects our actions have on air quality,
on both a city scale
and also per 100,000 inhabitants.
We can also identify where emissions are coming from,
and how they might affect our health.
It's been interesting to read through the data.
It's allowed us to see that there's a very close relationship
between what happens in the city, our own everyday actions,
and what's produced in the air -
what we produce, collectively, in the air.
For example, in the spectacular case of a New Year's Eve,
when the particulate suspension levels dramatically increase.
The same happens during soccer games in Bernabéu Stadium.
The project also examines
how the way in which we transfer this information to public spaces
can produce different reactions
as well as differences in the collective dynamics
involved in plazas and public spaces.
So we developed several prototypes.
One of them was this cloud of colored mist
on the facade of Media Lab Prado
which represents the levels of air pollution by pulsating.
This digital facade allows us to identify minimally polluted routes.
There are also mobile devices that help us navigate the city,
orienting us like a sort of aerial compass
while transmitting in real-time, information about the urban surroundings.
We're currently researching this "public good,"
as it's been called several times today.
It's intimately linked with our bodies,
and since it can impact the health
of the citizens of Madrid,
all of our bodies are affected by it,
and by the processes of exclusion that it will eventually produce.
We're also looking at what types of visual formats are best,
and to what extent a visualization can motivate, stimulate
or act as an intermediary for political action,
on both an individual and collective level.
Let's take a look at how Madrid breathes.
Last inhale.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)