Got your own blog yet? If not you鈥檇 better hurry up if you don鈥檛 want to be beaten to it by a flock of pigeons. Later this year 20 of the birds will take to the skies above San Jose, California, each carrying a GPS receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic cellphone. They will measure levels of pollutants they encounter, and beam back their findings as text messages to a blog in real time.
鈥淲e are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone,鈥� says interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa of the University of California, Irvine, who came up with the idea of the pigeon blog with her students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The team has built a prototype of the pigeons鈥� kit containing a cellphone circuit board with SIM card and communication chips, a GPS receiver and carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide sensors. They now plan to squeeze all the components onto a single board small enough for the birds to carry in a back pack.
The pigeon bloggers are due to be released at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts鈥� annual symposium in San Jose on 5 August. The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an interactive map. As well as providing local residents with real-time data on air quality, da Costa hopes the pigeon blog will inspire people to come up with new ways to monitor the environment. The pigeons will also carry cameras around their necks and post aerial photos to the blog.
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