Local governments around the world are spending millions of dollars to monitor, analyze and visualize environmental pollution using smart technologies. In this talk, design researcher Györgyi Gálik critically analyzes the reductionist, technological approaches and narratives of smart cities aimed at tackling air pollution and mitigating the effects of climate change, and explores how she has integrated her artistic and creative practice with this research. Györgyi’s work offers evidence-based practical alternatives to the reductive approaches and suggests how future work in this field might expand this narrow design space.

Györgyi will introduce a design experiment exploring the potential of a new, more socially-minded adaptation of current AI assistant devices in the home, with the ultimate aim of fostering low-pollution and low-carbon social innovation. Climate Pal is a new device developed to demonstrate how design research can raise novel questions and inform disciplines with an interest in behavior change, environmental pollution and urban technology design. The work demonstrates the potential for technologies to increase the degree of participation in reducing pollution in cities and facilitate the articulation of civic agency in complex environmental matters.