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Plenty: Pigeons Write A Smog Blog. You May Be Next. PDF Print E-mail
News
Written by Michela Pilo   
Aug 07, 2006 at 10:07 PM

by Emily Gertz

http://plentymag.com/features/2006/07/pigeons_write_a_smog_blog_you.php

When Beatriz da Costa releases 20 pigeons into the smoggy skies of San Jose, California in August, the flock will be writing what might be the world’s first avian blog—one offering a bird’s-eye perspective on air pollution. Each pigeon will be equipped with a tiny backpack loaded with devices that will measure pollution data and transmit the information to the web, creating a real-time air pollution index. Da Costa, an assistant professor in the graduate arts, computation and engineering program at University of California-Irvine (UCI), plans to release the pigeons twice a day during the 9-day conference of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, which begins August 5th. But the “Pigeonblog” is more than a cutting-edge art project—it also points to a more egalitarian future for environmental monitoring, when the ubiquity of communications networks and increasingly small and powerful personal electronic gear will let anyone assess the quality of the air they breathe.

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