Air Shake examines the character of air pollutants in Athens of the year 2027 to imagine both an array of future diseases and cures. It documents phenomena of leaching caused by a variety of chemicals that have been released into the atmosphere and their scientific, economic, and social attributes. Air Shake projects current urban habits in plausible future scenarios extracted from the present, based on the impact that different mixtures of air impose on human bodily systems. The project imagines an array of diseases that have begun to manifest in 2012, with Athens registering the highest levels of atmospheric pollution in decades. Because of the debt crisis and the citizens’ denial to yield to the overblown energy taxation, the continuous combustion of random cheap available materials, has resulted in the excessive release of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other carcinogens, eventually disemboweling the livelihood of citizens and their right breathe in the city. The projection of four speculative diseases onto the urban environment takes form as a series of healing environments, making visible the linkage between the air pollution and the imagined disease. The Air Shake installation operates around two systems that together create an immersive experience. First, there is a series of chimneys, which present the city upside-down, spewing different shakes of air mixes to heal city dwellers. A secondary system is visualizing the air shakes each chimney spews in a virtual reality environment, accessible through a series of movable tablets installed in the room. The installation space is imagined as a virtual healing environment that allows the physical embodiment of the visitors to project and immerse themselves in a series of future atmospheres.
Athens now accommodates a series of air cure plug-ins introduced to the urban infrastructure. Each plug-in aims utilizes new mixes of air pollutants to cure prevalent future diseases. Pods, membrane canopies, scaffolds, and spraying pistons are added to the city fabric, creating a secondary system of habitats of altered atmospheres.
