Connecting the Dots: Public Engagement with Environmental Data

Air pollution and other environmental hazards are often imperceptible and need to be made publicly visible. The paper argues for the importance of visualizations in drawing public attention to imperceptible hazards and in providing the public with access to empirical data describing the risks. It also argues for critical inquiry into hazards’ selective visibility as it is produced by visualizations. The impact of visualizations and their selective visibility are considered through the example of a public art project called Particle Falls installed in 2014 in Pittsburgh, a city with a long history of both ignoring air pollution and working to ameliorate this problem. I examine the impact and selective visibility of Particle Falls by considering the underlying production of data, as well as context and support systems for this visualization, and by comparing it with other visualizations of local air quality.