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Attention-Image

This seems to be an image created by the ethnographer based on screen shots of the Atmotube reading of air pollution, juxtaposed with a photograph taken by the ethnographer of pollution in the area. It is striking to see the pollution measure say "Air is good" when there is a picture of a hazy street right next to it. As such the image calls attention to different modes of visualizing toxicity--seeing a place and knowing it through quantified measure of VOC and seeing through immediate observations of one's surrounds.

VOC-images

Looking at the juxtaposition of images in this visualization, I could see immediately that the atmotube reading said the air quality was good. But I had to read the caption closely to "see" that the photographs were showing pollution, as opposed to just a chilly and foggy morning. The photographs in particular resist an easy reading of the situation, and could in fact make a case for going beyond the visual (whether via the atmotube or the photos).

knowing vs sensing

I would suggest thinking more about the role played by visualizations in the ability of ethnographers studying air pollution "to know but not to find". Both atmotube and the photos visualize air pollution in specific ways and resist "finding" evidence of it, even though residents or the ethnographer knows it exists. What is the stuff that allows the ethnographer to know--sensory experiences, for instance? The question could then become "To sense but not to see" just as much as it is about "to know but not to find"?

knowledge-VOC

This visualization makes the argument that pollution in the air, produced by the refinery, is obscured when measured through personal monitors. This is an argument about how knowledge production about quotidian anthropocenic toxics like VOCs shapes how problems of toxicity are regulated and addressed.

quotidian toxic

This visualization shows how toxics like VOCs are invisible and "quotidian" presences which are felt, but often not easy to make visible for regulation. Toxicity here refers to the substances like VOCs and explores both their materiality when considered in terms of particles, and their seeming immateriality when they become invisible due to our ways of looking and creating knowledge. The overall essay description suggests there may be other toxics at work such as race, class, gender, but that doesn't come through in this visualization.