Mutual Air Wind Chimes Let You Hear the Pollution in the Air

The air in major cities around the world is heavily polluted. Californians, in particular, can see that for themselves on especially smoggy days. But that doesn’t mean the pollution is absent when you can’t see it. And, as is human nature, we tend to ignore whatever we can’t easily perceive. That lack of perception is holding back efforts to make improvements, which is why the Mutual Air project was created to make air pollution tangible.

The Mutual Air project is part science and part art, and is comprised of a series of 30 sound installations distributed by the Exploratorium in Oakland. It’s the brain child of artist Rosten Woo, who wanted a way to increase public awareness of the pollution in the air all around us. To do that, Mutual Air creates an auditory representation of real air pollution data using wind chimes and wood blocks. The chime rings when it detects local particulate matter, and the wood block sounds with the Earth’s global CO2 average.

To gather the necessary data, Woo and the Mutual Air development team turned to Particle’s development boards. Where WiFi is available, they used the Particle Photon, which is a popular IoT development board. In locations where WiFi is sparse, they used the cellular Particle Electron. Each board uses a Planteuer 2500 particulate matter sensor to collect data on local air conditions, and connects to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to receive data on global conditions. Mutual Air may not be able to improve air quality directly, but it can raise public awareness about the problem.