Burning Rich, Burning Lean: Expertise and the Smell of Automobile Exhaust

This paper offers a comparative history of two 20th-Century global cities: Los Angeles and Berlin. L.A. acquired a reputation for its "smog" after World War Two. Rich with unburned carbon fumes from the exhaust pipes of automobiles, the region's air reacted with sunlight to form a thick, dark, eye-stinging blanket that stirred environmental justice activists into action. Scientists in the region debated whether this problem had anything o do with automobility. Finally, smell and taste chemist Arie Jan Haagen-Smit of Cal Tech devised experiments that proved smog resulted from car engines. Meanwhile, Berlin was split into two halves. Most histories of divided Germany spotlight the optics of the wall and surveillance. What gets missed in visualism is polysensoriality. Differing technological regimes and environmental regulations one side as opposed to the other led to Berlin's air smelling much leaner in the West and much richer in the East to mechanics with a diagnostic nose for identifying a problem with a car. In crossing from one Germany to the other, some mechanics enjoyed the pleasures of fresher air on the one side and others enjoyed the pleasures of nostalgia for how their own pre-regulatory home cities had once smelled on the other side. Keywords: Labor, air pollution, technology, pleasure, urbanism

Sarah Grant ∆ (SOAN, Concordia University, Canada)

Heat Seek Sensors: Turning Thermoception into Evidence for Housing Justice

This presentation delves into Heat Seek, a civic technology initiative aimed at addressing systemic heating inequities in New York City apartments. It traces the organization's trajectory from its inception in 2014 as a tenant advocacy tool to its dissolution in 2024 and subsequent adoption by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the presentation analyzes how Heat Seek's temperature sensors transformed the human experience of cold into quantifiable evidence, enabling tenants to challenge landlord negligence and enforce housing code compliance.
Leveraging Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this discussion examines how Heat Seek operated as a networked system, integrating sensors, data, and stakeholders to influence housing justice. It will explore the cultural and political construction of "comfort," the historical evolution of NYC's heat code, and the implications of reducing sensory experiences to numerical data for institutional adoption. Additionally, the presentation examines the challenges of aligning the Heat Seek initiative with scholarly tech justice frameworks, exploring the extent to which it reflects principles of community control and data ownership. It also considers whether the institutionalization of Heat Seek represents a form of surveillance or a step towards achieving policy changes through design justice.
Keywords: sensors, Heat Seek, housing justice, New York City, tenant rights

Ai Hisano ∆ (University of Tokyo, Japan)

Aesthetic Immersion and Sensory Multiplicity: Exploring the Politics of Perception in Art Spaces

In 1805, William Wordsworth described the panorama as a way to “mimic sights that ape the absolute presence of reality.” This late-18th-century invention—a large, circular landscape painting within a cylindrical room—allowed viewers to immerse themselves in 360-degree environments, akin to a form of early virtual reality. Standing at the center of the panorama, viewers experienced a layered reality: they felt both "here and now" in their own time and space and "then and there" in the depicted landscape (Freidberg, 1993). This overlapping of time-spaces—real and virtual, present and past—enabled a multi-sensory engagement that expanded the boundaries of perception (Classen, 2017; Krmpotich, 2019; Levent & Pascual-Leone, 2014).
Through these immersive sensations, people “acquire a body” and a new sense of presence (Latour, 2004). This presentation explores how such settings allow for what Jacques Rancière (2004) calls the “redistribution of the sensible”, where sensations restructure our perception of reality and invite political and aesthetic possibilities beyond conventional experiences. By examining how museums allow viewers to confront and engage with these sensations—imagined or real, the presentation suggests how art spaces might disrupt existing social structures and reveal new modes of consciousness, ultimately transforming the body and senses.
Keywords: aesthetics, body, virtuality, experience