Descripción del proyecto
Impacto de las ondas físicas en los entornos urbanos
Las ondas físicas —ya se trate de radiación térmica, ondas sonoras o radiofrecuencias— constituyen una perturbación ambiental significativa. Al atravesar el entorno urbano de forma invisible, causan daños en los cuerpos, tanto humanos como no humanos, de formas desconocidas. El proyecto WAVEMATTERS, financiado con fondos europeos, investiga cómo afectan las ondas a cuerpos y entornos específicos y se convierten en problemas de interés público e intervención de diseño. El proyecto incluye un extenso trabajo de campo etnográfico en zonas donde se han puesto en marcha proyectos urbanos para atenuar el efecto de isla de calor urbana, reducir el ruido ambiental y construir redes de comunicación inalámbricas de quinta generación. WAVEMATTERS estudiará el impacto de la exposición corporal a las ondas físicas y cómo estas provocan intervenciones de diseño. El proyecto también explorará cómo se adaptan físicamente las personas a dichas ondas.
Objetivo
Cities are critical zones where the intermingling of environmental processes, infrastructural arrangements and human lives is increasingly apparent and disputed. Physical waves, particularly heat radiation, sound waves and radio frequencies, constitute major environmental disturbances that invisibly cross the urban built environment affecting bodies, human and nonhuman, in harmful and uncertain ways. By asking how they come to matter, this project explores how waves become associated to specific bodies and environments, as well as how they become matters of public concern and design intervention. To answer these questions, this project entails extended ethnographic fieldwork at key locations where ur-ban projects aimed at mitigating the urban heat island effect, abating environmental noise and building 5th generation wireless communication networks are currently unfolding. Following techno-scientific researchers, city officials, professional consultants, affected groups and concerned residents, the project will address two major research problems: 1. How bodily exposure is done in practice, paying attention to both knowledge production and controversies concerning wave-related exposure, as well as to how individuals learn to be affected by and bodily attune to physical waves. 2. How waves problematize forms of urban coexistence leading to design interventions that reassemble (and disassemble) urban environments, as well as to practices of imagining other possible urban environments. A unique feature of this project is its emphasis on expanding conventional ethnographic research by means of multimodal collaborations with actors from the field, thus actively engaging in multimedia forms of knowledge pro-duction, prototyping or community building. This is indeed crucial to reassessing the material politics of the Anthropocene as entailing contested practices of materializing abstract or imperceptible environmen-tal disturbances.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
10117 Berlin
Alemania