PigeonBlog Interspecies Co-production in the Pursuit of Resistant Action

—a project by Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazeg and Kevin Ponto

"To make people believe, is to make them act." —-Michel de Certeau "

PigeonBlog was a collaborative endeavor between homing pigeons, artist, engineers, and pigeon fanciers engaged in a grass-roots, scientific data-gathering initiative designed to collect and distribute information about air quality conditions to the general public. Pigeons earned custom-built miniature air pollution sensing devices enabled to send the collected localized information to an on-line server without delay (Figure 21.1). Pollution levels were visualized and plotted in real time over Google's mapping environment, thus allowing immediate access to the collected information to anyone with connection to the Internet.

PigeonBlog was an attempt to combine DIY electronics development with a grass-roots scientific data-gathering initiative, while simultaneously investigating the potentials of interspecies co-production in the pursuit of resistant action.46 How could animals help us in raising awareness of social injustice? Could their ability to performing tasks and activi­ties that humans simply can't, be exploited in this manner while maintaining a respectful relationship with the animals?

PigeonBlog was developed and implemented in Southern California, which ranks among the ten most polluted regions in the country. Its aims were (1) to reinvoke urgency around a topic that has serious health consequences but lacks public action and commitment to change, (2) to broaden the notion of a citizen science while building bridges between scientific research agendas and activist-oriented citizen concerns, and (3) to develop mutually positive work

and play practices between situated human beings and other animals in technoscientific worlds.

When thinking of pigeons, people tend to think of the many species found in urban environments. Often referred to as "flying rats,"" these birds and their impressive ability to adapt to urban landscapes aren't always seen in a favorable light by their human cohabi­tants. At least by association, then, PigeonBlog attempted to start a discussion about pos­sible new forms of cohabitation in our changing urban ecologies and made visible an already existing world of human-pigeon interaction. At a time where species boundaries are being actively reconstructed on the molecular level, a reinvestigation of human to nonhuman animal relationships is necessary.

PigeonBlog was inspired by a famous photograph of a pigeon carrying a camera around its neck taken at the turn of the twentieth century. This technology, developed by the German engineer Julius Neubronner for military applications, allowed photographs to be taken by pigeons while in flight. A small camera was set on a mechanical timer to take pictures periodically as pigeons flew over regions of interest. Currently on display in the Deutsche Museum in Munich, these cameras were functional, but never served their intended purpose of assisted spy technology during wartime. Nevertheless, this early example of using living animals as participants in surveillance technology systems pro­voked the following questions: What would the twenty-first-century version of this com­bination took like? What types of civilian and activist applications could it be used for?

Facilities emitting hazardous air pollutants are frequently sited in, or routed through, low-income and "minority" neighborhoods, thereby putting the burden of related health and work problems on already disadvantaged sectors of the population who have the least means and legal recourse (particularly in the case of non-citizens) to defend themselves against this practice. Recent studies have revealed that air pollution levels in Los Angeles and Riverside counties are high enough to directly affect children's health and development.

With homing pigeons serving as the "reporters" of current air pollution levels, Pigeon-Blog attempted to create a spectacle provocative enough to spark people's imagination and interest in the types of action that could be taken to reverse this situation. Activists' pursuits can often have a normalizing effect rather than one that inspires social change. Circulating information on "how bad things are" can easily be lost in our daily information overload. It seems that artists are in the perfect position to invent new ways in which information is conveyed and participation is inspired. The pigeons became my communicative objects in this project and "collaborators" in the co-production of knowledge.

PigeonBlog also helped to provide entry into the health and environmental sciences. The largest government-led air pollution control agency in Southern California is the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), covering Orange County and the urban areas of Riverside and Los Angeles counties. Despite AQMD's efforts, in addition to major air quality improvements achieved since the 1970s, pollution levels in the region still surpass national regulatory health standards. In 2005 ozone levels exceeded the federal health standard for ozone on eighty-four days, or nearly one quarter of the calendar year.

Besides the actual numbers, it was the way in which air pollution measurements are currently conducted that the project hoped to address. The South Coast AQMD controls thirty-four monitoring stations in its district. These are fixed stations that cost approxi­mately tens of thousands of dollars per station. Each station collects a set of gases restricted to its immediate surroundings. Values in between these stations are calculated based on scientific interpellation models. Stations are generally positioned in quiet, low-traffic areas, not near known pollution hot spots, such as power plants, refineries, and highways. The rationale behind this strategy is to obtain representative values of the urban air shed as opposed to data "tainted" by local sources in the immediate surroundings.

PigeonBlog's birds had the potential to test these interpellation models. Not only were they collecting the actual information while "moving" around, but they also were flying at about three hundred feet, an area that has proven difficult to assess through other means. Most flying targets are themselves sources of pollution. Airplanes in particular have this problem, and obviously cannot fly at such a low altitude.

Recent behavioral studies of pigeons have revealed that in addition to the commonly accepted theory that pigeons orient themselves in relation to the Earth's magnetic field, they also use visual markers such as highways and bigger streets for orientation.48 Flying about three hundred feet above the ground, pigeons are ideal candidates to help sense traffic-related air pollution, and to validate pollution dispersion in those regions. Depend­ing on the location of the initial release, the pigeons could also report ground-level information at locations where AQMD-sanctioned monitors were not available.

The pigeon "backpack" developed for this project consisted of a combined GPS (lati­tude-, longitude. altitude)/GSM (cell phone tower communication) unit and corresponding antennas, a dual automotive CO/NOx pollution sensor, a temperature sensor, a subscribed identity module (SIM) card interface, a microcontroller, and standard supporting elec­tronic components. Because of its design, we essentially ended up developing an open platform, short message service (SMS) enabled cell phone, ready to be rebuilt and repurposed by anyone who is interested in doing so. While the development of the basic func­tionality of this device took us about three months, miniaturizing it to a comfortable pigeon size took us three times as long. After some initial discomfort, many revisions, "fitting sessions" and balance training in the loft, the birds seemed to take to the devices quite well and were able to fly short distances (up to twenty miles).

The pigeons that worked with us on the project belonged to Bob Matsuyama, a pigeon fancier and middle school shop and science teacher, who became a main collaborator in the project. He volunteered his birds for PigeonBlog and helped the pigeons train and interact with us.

After many trials and test flights in Southern California with Bob and his birds, we felt ready to introduce the project to a larger audience. Pigeons flew on three occasions, once as part of the Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, an event sponsored by UC Irvine's Humanities Research Institute, and twice as part of the Inter Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Festival in San Jose. All three of these events took place in August 2006 and the observing human audience members got a chance to interact with the birds and retrieve the collected pollution information. The birds that worked with us in San Jose belonged to a local San Jose pigeon fancier.

The reactions to PigeonBlog were diverse. The human-animal work was embraced and applauded by many, but there were also critical comments by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who accused PigeonBlog; of animal abuse and conducting nonscientifically grounded experiments. PETA's campaign didn't result in action beyond the public statement issued by the group, but it tainted the experience for a brief moment. Animal abuse was not "practiced" as part of the project, nor was animal rights a topic that the project was hoping to create public dialogue around. PigeonBlog was not animal rights in action but political cross-species art in action, and the collaboration with the birds was organic to the project. However, on a more positive note, PETA's critique raised very important questions regarding the legitimacy of arts/science experiments. PETA's accusations were built on the assessment that PigeonBlog was not scientifically grounded and should therefore cease its activities. Is human-animal work as part of political action less  legitimate  than the same type of activity when  framed  under the umbrella of science?

In addition to technophile "fans" of the project who simply admired the "coolness factor" of putting electronics on birds, environmental health scientists raised questions about the technology used and wondered if the device could be used for their own research, which for the most part was geared toward tracing personalized pollution exposure to humans." Another group of people who inquired about the project were ornithologists (professional and hobbyists) looking for cheap and feasible ways to track birds of all kinds. Then there were the many e-mails from pigeon fanciers around the country wanting to become involved in PigeonBlog; itself, as well as green/environmental activists simply being supportive of the project's goals.

All of these inquiries had a logic to them. Whereas the technophile approach to any­thing electronic was certainly the least interesting or relevant to the project's aim, the technophile community is at least partially linked to the type of work that technoscience artists engage in. The specific questions regarding the technology and its potential useful­ness for other research endeavors made sense. After all, the project did produce a very small, lightweight, and inexpensive device that couldn't be purchased commercially.

We also received an invitation to participate in a Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant geared toward the development of small, autonomous aerial vehicles designed around the aerodynamics of birds," as well as inquiries regarding the feasibility of "measuring pulmonary artery pressure in birds during flight." How could PigeonBlog possibly be of help to these people? Isn't it obvious from this work that a DARPA grant is the last thing its authors would want to be involved in, and that da Costa is neither a biologist nor a veterinarian? Why was I suddenly being associated with areas of expertise that I was in no way qualified to respond to?

PigeonBlog received a lot of media coverage. Major national and international newspa­pers covered the project, and so had national television news channels. In nearly every instance, I was being referred to as "Beatriz da Costa, researcher at the University of Cali­fornia, Irvine." "Researcher" seemed to imply "scientist" in many people's minds, rather than "creative," "social," or "artistic" researcher. Suddenly I was put under a scrutiny and questioning similar to what scientists have to go through after publishing their work, and the association of the "political technoscientific artist" with a "specific" intellectual seemed to have gone one step too far.

This realization and thoughts about the future of PigeonBlog made me pause for a while. Did the project lose its political potential by becoming too closely associated with the university and myself being an actor within it? How should PigeonBlog continue? Should PigeonBlog data be linked to existing air pollution models in order to justify the project's scientific validity to criticism raised by groups such as PETA? And what would this approach entail? Would large amounts of money now have to be raised to conduct a "scientifically sanctioned" study? Would pigeons have to be flown for several years, eventually accumulating enough data to publish results in a scientific journal rather than at an arts festival? Wouldn't this end up creating the same trap of eventually developing expertise while becoming less accessible to a nonexpert public?

At this point, PigeonBlog's future remains uncertain. Perhaps the most inspiring and gratifying inquiry came from the Cornell University Ornithology Lab, which asked me to serve on the board of its current "Urban Bird Gardens" project, which is part of its citizen science initiative. The citizen science initiative involves bird observation and data gathering conducted by nonexpert citizens, ranging from the elderly to schoolchildren. Unlike other "outreach" programs conducted by universities around the country, Cornell's citizen science initiative actually uses the collected data as part of its research studies. Several projects conducted under the citizen science agenda, such as "PigeonWatch," "Urban Bird Studies," and now "Urban Bird Gardens," overlap in their aim and audience with the ambitions PigeonBlog set out to address.

Rather than dedicate myself to a scientific justification of PigeonBlog built within the university research environment and its related publication venues, I am hoping that this approach will be more true to PigeonBlog’s original aim in situating itself between the academy and nonexpert participants.