Frackbox

Citizen Sense 2015 - 2016

Frackbox was designed to be covertly placed at the intersections between Pennsylvanian citizens’ homes and nearby fracking sites in the United States. These structures (which at first glance appear to be the standard road-side US mailbox) contain a kit which monitors air pollutants and volatile organic compounds. Members of the Pennsylvanian community, working with the kits in 2014, were able to collect enough evidence to unlock an additional $1.6 million of state funding towards further environmental monitoring.

Courtesy of the artist. Citizen Sense is a research and practice group based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Citizen Sense is led by Jennifer Gabrys, working in collaboration with Helen Pritchard and Lara Houston, along with community members, creative practitioners and scientific consultants. Citizen Sense is currently funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Materials

Converted mailbox; electronics; sensing equipment. Dimensions: 48 x 15 x 28cm

Exhibition

The New Observatory
June 2017 – October 2017 at FACT, Liverpool

Data Types

Environmental, Geospatial, Identifiable, Metadata, Shared, State, Temporal

About the Artist

The Citizen Sense project is led by Professor Jennifer Gabrys and is funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. The project, which began in January 2013, investigates the relationship between technologies and practices of…
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