Delta Fabrics

The project exposes dangerous differences in official, reported air quality measurements in the Hong Kong/Shenzhen border region from Chinese and international sources, and the realities ‘on the ground’ in one of the world’s most rapidly advancing cities.  In this region, dust is a transnational vector which crosses otherwise fixed economic and political boundaries.

The Chinese government occasionally limits access to air quality data and adheres to a less stringent standard for reporting on conditions of human health than international bodies.  With Beijing and Shanghai’s notorious air pollution problems, serious air quality issues in the Pearl River Delta are often overlooked.  The project seeks to initiate an open-source data harvesting and reporting mechanism for the region, and regions like it throughout the world.

AGENCY built an air particulate sensor and traveled to Hong Kong and Shenzhen to conduct on-the-ground measurements of fine airborne particulate (PM2.5), hazardous to human health and life.

A series of visualizations and materializations transform thousands of data points, exposing the ‘deltas’ between reported and measured data.  AGENCY is currently beta-testing a distributed sensor for mass production.  Stay tuned to this space for updates.