Air Datascape

Air Datascape opens at God's House Tower on Thursday 24 September, running through to Monday 28 September in the Crawford Room. It's an exhibition that turns Southampton's air pollution data into art, and it's free to get into.

The project was led by Dr Atsuhide Ito, a Senior Research Fellow at Southampton Solent University, working with three Solent students and graduates: Aster Cook, who studies BA Hons Prosthetics and Special Effects Design; Sian Chungh, a BA Fine Art graduate shortlisted for the Platform Graduate Award 2026; and Agalya Kumaraguruparasharma, in her final year of BA Illustration. Back in May 2026, the four of them carried air pollution sensors through their daily lives across the city, recording data from the places they travelled, lived and spent time in. Ito also ran the Southampton Marathon on 3 May, logging pollution levels every two minutes along the route. Those four distinct datasets, each shaped by a body moving through the city, were then translated into art.

What you'll see in the room are kinetic sculptures that look like Japanese origami wind wheels, a diorama of three-dimensional environments, a prosthetic set of lungs that you can expand or contract with a foot pump, and a pollution map made from fingerprints. It's one of six projects funded through Solent's Advancing Research and Knowledge Fund, and the people behind it describe it as making the invisible violence of pollution visible.

Admission is free, and the exhibition runs from Thursday 24 to Monday 28 September at God's House Tower, Crawford Room, Town Quay Road, SO14 2NY. Opening hours are 10:00–16:00 on Thursday, 10:00–17:00 on Friday and Saturday, 10:00–16:00 on Sunday, and 09:00–16:00 on Monday.