The Life of Air

The Life of Air: Dwelling, Communicating, Manipulating

edited by Monika Bakke


Monika Bakke

Introduction: The Multispecies Use of Air

‘It’s alive!’ we could certainly exclaim if confronted with a microscopic view of air. As aerobiologists observe, ‘[h]undreds of thousands of individual microbial cells can exist in a cubic metre of air, representing perhaps hundreds of unique taxa’ (Womack et al., 2010: 3645). But what deserves special attention here is not only that air is full of life but also, apart from being a mean of transport and communication, air is a habitat in its own right. The zoe of air comes in abundance and we – breathing organisms – are all in this together for better and for worse, dead or alive. We have finally come to realize that air is messy, being neither an empty space nor a void, but a space where species meet. And like any other life form, as Donna Haraway emphasizes, we find ourselves ‘in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down’ (2008: 42). (more...)

Dwelling in Air


Ann M. Womack, Brendan J. M. Bohannan, Jessica L. Green
Biodiversity and Biogeography of the Atmosphere

Anna A. Gorbushina, Renate Kort, Anette Schulte, David Lazarus, Bernhard Schnetger, Hans-Jürgen Brumsack, William J. Broughton, Jocelyne Favet
Life in Darwin's Dust: Intercontinental Transport and Survival of Microbes in the Nineteenth Century

Anders Hedenström
Extreme Endurance Migration: What Is the Limit to Non-Stop Flight?

Elizabeth Thomas
Tomas Saraceno Looks to the Sky and Sees Possibilities


Nerea Cavillo

In the Air


Steven Connor
Taking to the Air

Nonhuman Volatile Communication


Frederick R. Adler
Plant Signalling: The Opportunities and Dangers of Chemical Communication

Geraldine A. Wright, Florian P. Schiestl
The Evolution of Floral Scent: The Influence of Olfactory Learning by Insect Pollinators on the Honest Signalling of Floral Rewards

Michael R. Whitehead, Rod Peakall
Integrating Floral Scent, Pollination Ecology and Population Genetics

Corinna Thom, David C. Gilley, Judith Hooper, Harald E. Esch
The Scent of the Waggle Dance

Anthropology of Scents


Gordon M. Shepherd
The Human Sense of Smell: Are We Better Than We Think?

Charles J. Wysocki, George Preti
Facts, Fallacies, Fears, and Frustrations with Human Pheromones

Susana Camara Leret
Smellscapes: The Loss of Smell in a Visual Culture

Usman Haque
Scents of Space

Oswaldo Maciá, Jenny Marketou, Chrysanne Stathacos, Clara Ursitti
Odor Limits

Inspiration-Expiration


Bogusław Buszewski, Martyna Kęsy, Tomasz Ligor, Anton Amann
Human Exhaled Air Analytics: Biomarkers of Diseases

Sabrina Raaf
Breath I: Pleasure
Breath Cultures

Jarosław Kozakiewicz
Oxygen Towers

Tomas Saraceno
Poetic Cosmos of the Breath

Ruud Kaulingfreks , René Ten Bos
Learning to Fly: Inspiration and Togetherness

M. J. Parkes
Breath-holding and Its Breakpoint

Airborne Anxieties


Simon Luechinger
Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach

G. Liccardi, A. Custovic, M. Cazzola, M. Russo, M. D'Amato, G. D'Amato
Avoidance of Allergens and Air Pollutants in Respiratory Allergy

Lisa Fong Poh Ng
The Virus That Changed My World

How Flu Viruses Attack


What You Should Know About Biological Warfare


How to Survive- Biological or Chemical Attack


Critical Art Ensemble
Bodies of Fear in a World of Threat

Beatriz da Costa

Pigeonblog Pigeonblog


Attributions