Journal articles on the topic 'Electric relays. Factories Electric power distribution'

<p>This paper suggests the theory of distance protection criteria in power distribution systems for power plant generation. Multi-developed countries have energy power plants that placed in remote areas which are far from the grid line. Hence, they should be coupled to the low power transportation systems necessarily. While higher-rating relays are adopted to preserve feeders at power substations, fuses are merely obtainable outside on feeder channel. The safe system process, space protection is dispatched to save feeders. In this review, feeders with distance relays are equipped, together with over-current protection relays and fuses. Energy power plant having distance protection system is designed the implemented system was a 6-MW unit of compressed power energy reproduction. The sample feeder was shortened to be equal four-bus experiment feeder for transmitting resolution. The fault currents have chances adopted to form protecting regions of distance relays. Protection of the power line through the designed power plants for distance relaying can decrease problem in relay location because of the impedance-based location of the distance relay. </p>

The paper presents thermal analysis and arc flash analysis taking care of protection relays coordination settings for electric motor drives connected to the electrical network. Power flow analysis is performed to check if there are any voltage and loading violation conditions in the system. Fault analysis is performed to check the short circuit values and compute arc flash energy dissipated at industrial busbars to eliminate damage to electrical equipment and electrical shocks and hazard to personnel. Computers enable the use of smart algorithms used by electrical engineers in providing accuracy of these actions. A fast and accurate procedure for proper incident arc flash energy computation and overcurrent relays coordination in distribution networks is presented. The paper presents the use of the Arc Flash module for arc flash energy computation during the short circuit on LV and HV busbars with soft motor starters. A sample case of one real network is presented which uses soft motor starters as well as the influence on arc flash energy in one transformer station supplying the industrial network in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Addition of Distributed Generators (DGs) to the electric network have more advantages to the network. It improves the voltage profile and the power flow in the network. In the last decade, DGs is used in power system, especially the distribution system. Coordination study for protective devices must be performed on the distribution network with DGs to reach selectivity with minimum clearance time of fault. Due to DG insertion to the electric system, the short circuit level is changed and coordination between protective elements should be done. This paper presents a technique to avoid the miscoordination problem between protective devices due to the impact of DG units insertion without any additional costs. The proposed technique depend on activating and updating the setting of network relays to achieve correct coordination. Also, it doesn't need any additional costs or any additional equipement to be installed in the electric network. This paper make studies on a real radial system of power transformer with its feeders of a 66kV utility substation before and after adding DGs. ETAP software is used to simulate the network under study.

In any power systems, protective devices will detect fault conditions and operate circuit breakers in order to disconnect the load from the fault current and limit loss of service due to failure. This fault may involve one or more phases and the ground, or may occur between two or more phases in a three-phase systems. In ground, fault’ or ‘earth fault, current flows into the earth. In a poly-phase system, a fault may affect each of the three phases equally which is a symmetrical fault. If only some phases are affected, the resulting ‘asymmetrical fault’ becomes more complicated to analyze due to the simplifying assumption of equal current magnitude in all the phases being no longer applicable. Therefore, the prospective short circuit current of the fault can be calculated for power systems analysis procedures. This will assist in the choice of protective devices like circuit breakers, current transformers and relays. This research work evaluated and analyzed the occurrence of faults in a distribution system. Fault currents were obtained and the maximum tripping time required for the protective devices to operate were determined. Hence, it was possible to select appropriate relay and circuit breaker for effective operation of a distribution

The reliability of power distribution of PT PLN (Persero) branch of Padang especially in Rayon Tabing most of the repeaters is still not optimal. This is due to an uncoordinated protection relay on each feeder. One effort made to improve the reliability of electric power is to rearrange the protection of overcurrent relays and ground disturbance relays on the feeder. So coordinated with each other well and is expected if there is interference in one of the repeater will not bring black out on other repeater. In this research we analyzed short circuit current at 20 kV side. From the analysis results obtained new relay protection settings based on the calculation of short-circuit current settings and compare the results with existing protection relays. By making efforts to improve the reliability of electric power is to rearrange the protection relay on each feeder. Based on short circuit current analysis on each repeater, the largest short circuit in 3 phase, 2 phase, and 1 phase disturbance is located at 1% disturbance location and the smallest disturbance is at 100% disturbance location. It can be concluded that the farther the location of the disturbance that occurs the smaller the disturbance, and vice versa, if the location of the disturbance that occurs closer then the greater the noise flow.

Introduction of Distributed Energy Sources (DES) is the highest change happening to the distribution network. This paper describes different types of current limiting methods which reduce the magnitude of the fault current. The interconnected distributed energy sources to the conventional grid improves the power generation capacity of the power system but also increases the magnitude of fault current which cannot tolerate by the short-circuit ratings of the circuit breaker, relays, isolator etc. This paper reviews on the innovative electric equipment i.e. Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL), which reduces fault current magnitude in first cycle of fault current. Keywords: Distributed Energy Sources, Fault current, Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL), Protection Equipment.

Introduction of Distributed Energy Sources (DES) is the highest change happening to the distribution network. This paper describes different types of current limiting methods which reduce the magnitude of the fault current. The interconnected distributed energy sources to the conventional grid improves the power generation capacity of the power system but also increases the magnitude of fault current which cannot tolerate by the short-circuit ratings of the circuit breaker, relays, isolator etc. This paper reviews on the innovative electric equipment i.e. Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL), which reduces fault current magnitude in first cycle of fault current. Keywords: Distributed Energy Sources, Fault current, Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SFCL), Protection Equipment.

High-impedance faults (HIFs) caused by downed conductors in electric power systems are in general difficult to be detected using traditional protection relays due to small fault currents. The energized downed conductor can pose a safety risk to the public and cause a fire hazard. This paper presents a new method for locating the line (feeder) section of the HIF with the help of limited measurements in electric power systems. The discrete wavelet transform is used to extract the features of transients caused by HIFs. A modifiedk-means algorithm associated with genetic algorithms is then utilized to determine the placement of measurement facilities. The signal energies attained by wavelet coefficients serve as inputs to the support vector machine for locating the HIF line section. The simulation results obtained from an 18-busbar distribution system show the applicability of the proposed method.

The continuity of electric power service is a major factor determining electrical customer satisfaction. Research on the implementation of the ATS system between solar cells and grid system as a supplier of electrical power to household electrical loads for continuity and savings in electricity consumption costs aims to design an ATS system for delivering electrical power to the load system that can maintain the continuity of the supply of electricity, reducing costs electricity consumption while reducing dependence on grid electricity supply. The specific target to be achieved in this research is to design an ATS system for the distribution of electric power between grid system and solar power system and find out the cost of savings while maintaining continuity of electricity services, so that electricity consumers can benefit from technical and economic aspects. The method used in this study is an experimental method that is designing an electrical power supply ATS system to get the results of a good design and as planned. The equipment used is solar panels, relays, timers, inverters, household electrical loads, contactors, electrical measuring devices, temperature gauges and light intensity, battery systems and control panels. The results showed that the automatic transfer switch must attention to the design of an accurate and meticulous to avoid damage to the inverter. So that continuity of service of electric power is maintained. Electric power service using a solar cell system with 2 units of 100 Ah batteries and 6 units of 100 Wp solar panels can serve household electrical loads for 1 day of battery charging and discharging, 1 day of battery charging and 1 day of battery discharging with average electric energy generated at 1485 W-hours. Costs can be saved in 1 month if the price of electricity is Rp. 1352/Kwh, is Rp. 20,104.-/month with an investment cost of Rp. 27,956,000.

Purpose Distribution network protection is a complicated problem and mal-operation of the protective relays due to false settings make the operation of the network unreliable. Besides, obtaining proper settings could be very complicated. This paper aims to discuss an innovative evolutionary Lightning Flash Algorithm (LFA) which is developed for solving the relay coordination problems in distribution networks. The proposed method is inspired from the movements of cloud to ground lightning strikes in a thunderstorm phenomenon. LFA is applied on three case study systems including ring, interconnected and radial distribution networks. The power flow analysis is performed in Digsilent Power Factory software; then the collected data are sent to MATLAB software for optimization process. The proposed algorithm provides optimum time multiplier setting and plug setting of all digital overcurrent relays in each system. The results are compared with other methods such as particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm. The result comparisons demonstrate that the proposed LFA can successfully obtain proper relay settings in distribution networks with faster speed of convergence and lower total operation time of relays. Also, it shows the superiority and effectiveness of this method against other algorithms. Design/methodology/approach A novel LFA is designed based on the movements of cloud to ground lightning strikes in a thunderstorm. This method is used to optimally adjust the time multiplier setting and plug setting of the relays in distribution system to provide a proper coordination scheme. Findings The proposed algorithm was tested on three case study systems, and the results were compared with other methods. The results confirmed that the proposed method could optimally adjust the relay settings in the electric distribution system to provide a proper protection scheme. Practical implications The practical implications can be conducted on distribution networks. The studies provided in this paper approve the practical application of the proposed method in providing proper relay protection in real power system. Originality/value This paper proposes a new evolutionary method derived from the movements of cloud to ground lightning strikes in thunderstorm. The proposed method can be used as an optimization toolbox to solve complex optimization problems in practical engineering systems.

Objective: This paper presents the effect of anode temperature and contact voltage on the breakdown arc of micro electrical contact pair under DC excitation. Methods: A rectangular micro electrical contact pair is considered. The resistance and capacitance of the contact pair are obtained for the materials Al, Cu, Au and Pt. The anode temperature is calculated based on the 3D heat equation. Pre-breakdown arc due to anode temperature is analyzed. Result: The breakdown voltage and breakdown electric field characteristics for the gap between 0.5µm and 30µm are reported. The electric field of micro electrical contact pair is analyzed mathematically. The calculated values of resistance, anode temperature and electric field are compared with the simulation results obtained using COMSOL multiphysics FEA software tool. The arc-less operating region of micro contact is identified. Four cases with the ratings 50V/5A, 50V/0.5A, 400 V/ 5A and 400V/0.5A have been considered for the analysis of arcless micro electrical contact. Conclusion: These results can be considered while designing arc-less micro electrical switches, micro relays and micro circuit breakers which can be applicable for the future DC electric power distribution, protection system and automobiles. Also these results can be considered when designing micro actuators, sensors and electrostatic devices.

Although integration of wind distributed generation directly into the distribution level has considerable advantages, increased penetration of wind distributed generation (renewable distributed generation) alters the network configuration and jeopardizes the protection system operation and system stability; for this reason, necessary changes in power system protection philosophy must be achieved. Modern numerical relays offer extraordinary features and fast and accurate methods for spotting and detecting different unbalanced operating conditions and can be used to mitigate the influence of integrating wind distributed generation into distribution network. In this study, an adaptive directional negative protective scheme was implemented in the medium-level distribution network to investigate and evaluate the performance of protection system and introduce new adaptive protective scheme based on negative overcurrent protection to increase the selectivity and sensitivity of the protection system in case of unbalanced faulty conditions. The medium-level distribution network of Libya Eastern electric network had been implemented in ETAP software to address and evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach.

Electric power distribution systems that use air cables or ground cables often experience various disturbances. Interference that often occurs is symmetry or non-symmetric interference which can be a short relationship between one phase to the ground, between phases or the breakdown of one or more. To find out the magnitude of the interference current, an analysis of the transformer distribution system is needed to determine the disturbances that will occur.The transformer which is the main equipment in a GI must be considered in order to get the proper current circuit and security. Designing the right transformer setting is an effort to protect equipment, systems and consumer needs from disturbances that may occur in the distribution system. The calculation of the fault current and the magnitude of the nominal current of the transformer will be used as an important reference in determining the transformer settings in the distribution of voltage to consumers.From the results of these calculations it can be concluded that the performance time of feeder relays is slower than the time of relay in the event. The data in the field is still in the right condition (the difference is not too far), so that the overall OCR-GFR setting in the field is still in good condition.

AbstractThe widespread adoption of standard time in Britain took more than fifty years and simple public access to a representation of it took longer still. Whilst the railways and telegraph networks were crucial in the development of standardized time and time-distribution networks, very different contexts existed, from the Victorian period onwards, where time was significant in both its definition and its distribution. The moral drive to regulate and standardize aspects of daily life, from factory work to the sale of liquor, led to time being used as a tool for control. Yet, as a tool, it was problematic, both in its own regulation and in the regulation of its distribution. Companies such as the Standard Time Company, in creating businesses out of time distribution, found themselves at the heart of discussions of time and standards, acting, as they did, as a nexus between the nation's master timekeeper, the Royal Observatory, and London public houses, Lancashire cotton mills and myriad small businesses. We can see this network both literally, in electric wires, clocks, batteries and relays, and metaphorically, transmitting Victorian moral concerns of ‘power’ and ‘intelligence’ between imperial state and individual. Naturally enough, the network itself was as contested as the message it transmitted.

Purpose – This paper aims to use a survey of techniques to present the patterning of electric circuitry on printed circuit boards (PCBs). Second, a proposal of a new technology for direct exposure of interconnects on PCBs, using a digital micromirror device (DMD) is presented. Design/methodology/approach – In this proposal, the DMD chip was incorporated into a prototype system for exposure of soldermask pattern for a mass scale production. As a light source, 52 semiconductor UV lasers were combined together to deliver UV powerful beam onto the DMD chip area. Findings – A laser beam power of around 9 W was achieved from a single exposure head. With five exposure heads installed into a single machine, it is possible to expose 1,400 PCB panels per day. Such a production rate from a single exposure machine satisfies the demands of biggest PCB factories. Research limitations/implications – The Gaussian energy distribution of the laser beam from the 52-lasers head on the PCB surface was experimentally found. Because the exposure image needs to be highly uniform, this made a problem when the printed circuitry quality is considered. This problem was solved by using a software algorithm. Practical implications – The use of UV lasers exposure heads brings economical advantages over conventional bulb UV lamps. The power consumption drops down ten times for lasers source. Social implications – Because the exposure processing can be made with lower electric costs and higher yield, it will make the PCBs cheaper. Originality/value – At present, the idea of collecting a great number of lasers as a UV source for exposure head is attractive solution.

Green and sustainable power is the need of the day. With widening supply and demand gap, power management has become one of the most critical areas of concern all over the world. India’s energy consumption is increasing at one of the fastest rates in the world. Hence, we require Substation Automation Systems in the present day substations to efficiently control and deliver power. The main objective is to create a SCADA system for the desired substation. Power automation serving electric supply locations often require special protection against the effects of fault-produced. Protection relays need to function immediately when a faulty condition occurs. This is why Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED’s) are brought in for safe operation of switchyard devices, which can prevent disasters to energy supply and help in human safety. With the introduction of IEC 61850, utility communication will be used for substation automation and also for protection purposes within a substation and between substations. A Substation Automation System (SAS) provides facility to control and monitor all the equipment in the substation locally as well as remotely. A Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) system provides users with a Human Machine Interface (HMI) which can be used for controlling, monitoring and protection of devices. This saves us cost and time.Substations are key components of the power grid, facilitating the efficient transmission and distribution of electricity Substation automation systems make their control and monitoring possible in real time and help maximize availability, efficiency, reliability, safety and data integration.

The disturbance of the high voltage transmission can be caused by a short circuit, overload, lightning surge, and other natural disturbances. That disturbance can lead to disruption of the distribution of electricity and damage to the electric power system installation equipment. A reliable protection system that can identify the disturbance quickly and also can securing affected parts of the system from other parts that can still operate normally are needed. Protection system operation may fail due to various factors; therefore, in addition to primary protection required backup protection that can work as primary protection fails to work. Distance relays can be used as primary protection as well as remote backup protection on high-voltage transmission. While overcurrent relay (OCR) and ground fault relay (GFR) is used as a local backup if distance relay failed to work. This research conducted a study of protection relays coordination for primary protection or backup protection on the high-voltage transmission that connects to Payakumbuh substation and Koto Panjang substation. Coordination is done by calculating the distance relay settings that use as primary protection as well as remote backup protection relay settings and calculating the overcurrent and ground fault relay that used as local backup protection. From the calculation, we get setting time to coordinate distance relay, overcurrent relay, and ground fault relay. Setting time was conducted to the first zone of the distance relay within 0 sec, and the second zone within 0.4 sec and third zone within 1.2 sec. For overcurrent relay and ground fault relay use time delay 1 second where the value is above the value that used in the second zone of distance relay. Distance relay can be coordinated with the auto-reclose relay to close the circuit breaker automatically sometime after a temporary disturbance. Setting that use to auto reclose relay is dead time 1 second and reclaim time 40 second. The coordination between the distance relay with auto-reclose relay can improve the quality of distribution of electrical energy.

Electric forklifts, dominantly powered by lead acid batteries, are widely used for material handling in factories, warehouses, and docks. The long charging time and short working time characteristics of the lead acid battery module results in the necessity of several battery modules to support one forklift. Compared with the cost and time consuming lead acid battery charging system, a fuel cell/battery hybrid power module could be more convenient for a forklift with fast hydrogen refueling and long working time. In this paper, based on the characteristics of a fuel cell and a battery, a prototype hybrid forklift with a fuel cell/battery hybrid power system is constructed, and its hardware and software are designed in detail. According to the power demand of driver cycles and the state of charge (SOC) of battery, an energy management strategy based on load current following for the hybrid forklift is proposed to improve system energy efficiency and dynamic response performance. The proposed energy management strategy will fulfill the power requirements under typical driving cycles, achieve reasonable power distribution between the fuel cell and battery and, thus, prolong its continuous working time. The proposed energy management strategy is implemented in the hybrid forklift prototype and its effectiveness is tested under different operating conditions. The results show that the forklift with the proposed hybrid powered strategy has good performance with different loads, both lifting and moving, in a smooth and steady way, and the output of the fuel cell meets the requirements of its output characteristics, its SOC of battery remaining at a reasonable level.

Dzulfikar Muhammad Azhar, Yuniarto, in this paper explian that disruption of the power distribution network of 20 KV greatly influence the level of reliability of electric power system. Localize interference by means of network down one by one causing a long recovery time. As a result, SAIDI relatively high value. Protection Relays 551 SEL has a feature that can save the nominal fault current value last received. The value stored in the relay memory. Value of fault current can be processed into the distance nuisance. Thus, the fault current value can help officers to track the fault location based on distance. SCADA as a system that monitors and controls the electrical power system equipment remotely in real time on duty to display the current value of disturbance located at 551 SEL protection relays to be sent to the Control Center or the Master Station. Keywords : SCADA, fault current, relay protection 551 SEL

Our culture abhors the world.Yet Quicksand is swallowing the duellists; the river is threatening the fighter: earth, waters and climate, the mute world, the voiceless things once placed as a decor surrounding the usual spectacles, all those things that never interested anyone, from now on thrust themselves brutally and without warning into our schemes and manoeuvres (Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, p 3). When Michel Serres describes culture's abhorrence of the world in the opening pages of The Natural Contract he draws our attention to the sidelining of nature in histories and theories that have sought to describe Western culture. As Serres argues, cultural histories are quite often built on the debates and struggles of humanity, which are largely held apart from their natural surroundings, as if on a stage, "purified of things" (3). But, as he is at pains to point out, human activity and conflict always take place within a natural milieu, a space of quicksand, swelling rivers, shifting earth, and atmospheric turbulence. Recently, via the potential for vast environmental change, what was once thought of as a staid “nature” has reasserted itself within culture. In this paper I explore how Serres’s positioning of nature can be understood amid new communication systems, which, via the apparent dematerialization of messages, seems to have further removed culture from nature. From here, I focus on a set of artworks that work against this division, reformulating the connection between information, a topic usually considered in relation to media and anthropic communication (and something about which Serres too has a great deal to say), and nature, an entity commonly considered beyond human contrivance. In particular, I explore how information visualisation and sonification has been used to give a new sense of materiality to the atmosphere, repotentialising the air as a natural and informational entity. The Natural Contract argues for the legal legitimacy of nature, a natural contract similar in standing to Rousseau’s social contract. Serres’ss book explores the history and notion of a “legal person”, arguing for a linking of the scientific view of the world and the legal visions of social life, where inert objects and living beings are considered within the same legal framework. As such The Natural Contract does not deal with ecology per-se, but instead focuses on an argument for the inclusion of nature within law (Serres, “A Return” 131). In a drastic reconfiguring of the subject/object relationship, Serres explains how the space that once existed as a backdrop for human endeavour now seems to thrust itself directly into history. "They (natural events) burst in on our culture, which had never formed anything but a local, vague, and cosmetic idea of them: nature" (Serres, The Natural Contract 3). In this movement, nature does not simply take on the role of a new object to be included within a world still dominated by human subjects. Instead, human beings are understood as intertwined with a global system of turbulence that is both manipulated by them and manipulates them. Taking my lead from Serres’s book, in this paper I begin to explore the disconnections and reconnections that have been established between information and the natural environment. While I acknowledge that there is nothing natural about the term “nature” (Harman 251), I use the term to designate an environment constituted by the systematic processes of the collection of entities that are neither human beings nor human crafted artefacts. As the formation of cultural systems becomes demarcated from these natural objects, the scene is set for the development of culturally mediated concepts such as “nature” and “wilderness,” as entities untouched and unspoilt by cultural process (Morton). On one side of the divide the complex of communication systems is situated, on the other is situated “nature”. The restructuring of information flows due to developments in electronic communication has ostensibly removed messages from the medium of nature. Media is now considered within its own ecology (see Fuller; Strate) quite separate from nature, except when it is developed as media content (see Cubitt; Murray; Heumann). A separation between the structures of media ecologies and the structures of natural ecologies has emerged over the history of electronic communication. For instance, since the synoptic media theory of McLuhan it has been generally acknowledged that the shift from script to print, from stone to parchment, and from the printing press to more recent developments such as the radio, telephone, television, and Web2.0, have fundamentally altered the structure and effects of human relationships. However, these developments – “the extensions of man” (McLuhan)— also changed the relationship between society and nature. Changes in communications technology have allowed people to remain dispersed, as ideas, in the form of electric currents or pulses of light travel vast distances and in diverse directions, with communication no longer requiring human movement across geographic space. Technologies such as the telegraph and the radio, with their ability to seemingly dematerialize the media of messages, reformulated the concept of communication into a “quasi-physical connection” across the obstacles of time and space (Clarke, “Communication” 132). Prior to this, the natural world itself was the medium through which information was passed. Rather than messages transmitted via wires, communication was associated with the transport of messages through the world via human movement, with the materiality of the medium measured in the time it took to cover geographic space. The flow of messages followed trade flows (Briggs and Burke 20). Messages moved along trails, on rail, over bridges, down canals, and along shipping channels, arriving at their destination as information. More recently however, information, due to its instantaneous distribution and multiplication across space, seems to have no need for nature as a medium. Nature has become merely a topic for information, as media content, rather than as something that takes part within the information system itself. The above example illustrates a separation between information exchange and the natural environment brought about by a set of technological developments. As Serres points out, the word “media” is etymologically related to the word “milieu”. Hence, a theory of media should be always related to an understanding of the environment (Crocker). But humans no longer need to physically move through the natural world to communicate, ideas can move freely from region to region, from air-conditioned room to air-conditioned room, relatively unimpeded by natural forces or geographic distance. For a long time now, information exchange has not necessitated human movement through the natural environment and this has consequences for how the formation of culture and its location in (or dislocation from) the natural world is viewed. A number of artists have begun questioning the separation between media and nature, particularly concerning the materiality of air, and using information to provide new points of contact between media and the atmosphere (for a discussion of the history of ecoart see Wallen). In Eclipse (2009) (fig. 1) for instance, an internet based work undertaken by the collective EcoArtTech, environmental sensing technology and online media is used experimentally to visualize air pollution. EcoArtTech is made up of the artist duo Cary Peppermint and Leila Nadir and since 2005 they have been inquiring into the relationship between digital technology and the natural environment, particularly regarding concepts such as “wilderness”. In Eclipse, EcoArtTech garner photographs of American national parks from social media and photo sharing sites. Air quality data gathered from the nearest capital city is then inputted into an algorithm that visibly distorts the image based on the levels of particle pollution detected in the atmosphere. The photographs that circulate on photo sharing sites such as Flickr—photographs that are usually rather banal in their adherence to a history of wilderness photography—are augmented by the environmental pollution circulating in nearby capital cities. Figure 1: EcoArtTech, Eclipse (detail of screenshot), 2009 (Internet-based work available at:http://turbulence.org/Works/eclipse/) The digital is often associated with the clean transmission of information, as packets of data move from a server, over fibre optic cables, to be unpacked and re-presented on a computer's screen. Likewise, the photographs displayed in Eclipse are quite often of an unspoilt nature, containing no errors in their exposure or focus (most probably because these wilderness photographs were taken with digital cameras). As the photographs are overlaid with information garnered from air quality levels, the “unspoilt” photograph is directly related to pollution in the natural environment. In Eclipse the background noise of “wilderness,” the pollution in the air, is reframed as foreground. “We breathe background noise…Background noise is the ground of our perception, absolutely uninterrupted, it is our perennial sustenance, the element of the software of all our logic” (Serres, Genesis 7). Noise is activated in Eclipse in a similar way to Serres’s description, as an indication of the wider milieu in which communication takes place (Crocker). Noise links the photograph and its transmission not only to the medium of the internet and the glitches that arise as information is circulated, but also to the air in the originally photographed location. In addition to noise, there are parallels between the original photographs of nature gleaned from photo sharing sites and Serres’s concept of a history that somehow stands itself apart from the effects of ongoing environmental processes. By compartmentalising the natural and cultural worlds, both the historiography that Serres argues against and the wilderness photograph produces a concept of nature that is somehow outside, behind, or above human activities and the associated matter of noise. Eclipse, by altering photographs using real-time data, puts the still image into contact with the processes and informational outputs of nature. Air quality sensors detect pollution in the atmosphere and code these atmospheric processes into computer readable information. The photograph is no longer static but is now open to continual recreation and degeneration, dependent on the coded value of the atmosphere in a given location. A similar materiality is given to air in a public work undertaken by Preemptive Media, titled Areas Immediate Reading (AIR) (fig. 2). In this project, Preemptive Media, made up of Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer, equip participants with instruments for measuring air quality as they walked around New York City. The devices monitor the carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) or ground level ozone (O3) levels that are being breathed in by the carrier. As Michael Dieter has pointed out in his reading of the work, the application of sensing technology by Preemptive Media is in distinct contrast to the conventional application of air quality monitoring, which usually takes the form of extremely high resolution located devices spread over great distances. These larger air monitoring networks tend to present the value garnered from a large expanse of the atmosphere that covers individual cities or states. The AIR project, in contrast, by using small mobile sensors, attempts to put people in informational contact with the air that they are breathing in their local and immediate time and place, and allows them to monitor the small parcels of atmosphere that surround other users in other locations (Dieter). It thus presents many small and mobile spheres of atmosphere, inhabited by individuals as they move through the city. In AIR we see the experimental application of an already developed technology in order to put people on the street in contact with the atmospheres that they are moving through. It gives a new informational form to the “vast but invisible ocean of air that surrounds us and permeates us” (Ihde 3), which in this case is given voice by a technological apparatus that converts the air into information. The atmosphere as information becomes less of a vague background and more of a measurable entity that ingresses into the lives and movements of human users. The air is conditioned by information; the turbulent and noisy atmosphere has been converted via technology into readable information (Connor 186-88). Figure 2: Preemptive Media, Areas Immediate Reading (AIR) (close up of device), 2011 Throughout his career Serres has developed a philosophy of information and communication that may help us to reframe the relationship between the natural and cultural worlds (see Brown). Conventionally, the natural world is understood as made up of energy and matter, with exchanges of energy and the flows of biomass through food webs binding ecosystems together (DeLanda 120-1). However, the tendencies and structures of natural systems, like cultural systems, are also dependent on the communication of information. It is here that Serres provides us with a way to view natural and cultural systems as connected by a flow of energy and information. He points out that in the wake of Claude Shannon’s famous Mathematical Theory of Communication it has been possible to consider the relationship between information and thermodynamics, at least in Shannon’s explanation of noise as entropy (Serres, Hermes74). For Serres, an ecosystem can be conceptualised as an informational and energetic system: “it receives, stores, exchanges, and gives off both energy and information in all forms, from the light of the sun to the flow of matter which passes through it (food, oxygen, heat, signals)” (Serres, Hermes 74). Just as we are related to the natural world based on flows of energy— as sunlight is converted into energy by plants, which we in turn convert into food— we are also bound together by flows of information. The task is to find new ways to sense this information, to actualise the information, and imagine nature as more than a welter of data and the air as more than background. If we think of information in broad ranging terms as “coded values of the output of a process” (Losee 254), then we see that information and the environment—as a setting that is produced by continual and energetic processes—are in constant contact. After all, humans sense information from the environment all the time; we constantly decode the coded values of environmental processes transmitted via the atmosphere. I smell a flower, I hear bird songs, and I see the red glow of a sunset. The process of the singing bird is coded as vibrations of air particles that knock against my ear drum. The flower is coded as molecules in the atmosphere enter my nose and bind to cilia. The red glow is coded as wavelengths from the sun are dispersed in the Earth’s atmosphere and arrive at my eye. Information, of course, does not actually exist as information until some observing system constructs it (Clarke, “Information” 157-159). This observing system as we see the sunset, hear the birds, or smell the flower involves the atmosphere as a medium, along with our sense organs and cognitive and non-cognitive processes. The molecules in the atmosphere exist independently of our sense of them, but they do not actualise as information until they are operationalised by the observational system. Prior to this, information can be thought of as noise circulating within the atmosphere. Heinz Von Foester, one of the key figures of cybernetics, states “The environment contains no information. The environment is as it is” (Von Foester in Clarke, “Information” 157). Information, in this model, actualises only when something in the world causes a change to the observational system, as a difference that makes a difference (Bateson 448-466). Air expelled from a bird’s lungs and out its beak causes air molecules to vibrate, introducing difference into the atmosphere, which is then picked up by my ear and registered as sound, informing me that a bird is nearby. One bird song is picked up as information amid the swirling noise of nature and a difference in the air makes a difference to the observational system. It may be useful to think of the purpose of information as to control action and that this is necessary “whenever the people concerned, controllers as well as controlled, belong to an organised social group whose collective purpose is to survive and prosper” (Scarrott 262). Information in this sense operates the organisation of groups. Using this definition rooted in cybernetics, we see that information allows groups, which are dependent on certain control structures based on the sending and receiving of messages through media, to thrive and defines the boundaries of these groups. We see this in a flock of birds, for instance, which forms based on the information that one bird garners from the movements of the other birds in proximity. Extrapolating from this, if we are to live included in an ecological system capable of survival, the transmission of information is vital. But the form of the information is also important. To communicate, for example, one entity first needs to recognise that the other is speaking and differentiate this information from the noise in the air. Following Clarke and Von Foester, an observing system needs to be operational. An art project that gives aesthetic form to environmental processes in this vein—and one that is particularly concerned with the co-agentive relation between humans and nature—is Reiko Goto and Tim Collin’s Plein Air (2010) (fig. 3), an element in their ongoing Eden 3 project. In this work a technological apparatus is wired to a tree. This apparatus, which references the box easels most famously used by the Impressionists to paint ‘en plein air’, uses sensing technology to detect the tree’s responses to the varying CO2 levels in the atmosphere. An algorithm then translates this into real time piano compositions. The tree’s biological processes are coded into the voice of a piano and sensed by listeners as aesthetic information. What is at stake in this work is a new understanding of atmospheres as a site for the exchange of information, and an attempt to resituate the interdependence of human and non-human entities within an experimental aesthetic system. As we breathe out carbon dioxide—both through our physiological process of breathing and our cultural processes of polluting—trees breath it in. By translating these biological processes into a musical form, Collins and Gotto’s work signals a movement from a process of atmospheric exchange to a digital process of sensing and coding, the output of which is then transmitted through the atmosphere as sound. It must be mentioned that within this movement from atmospheric gas to atmospheric music we are not listening to the tree alone. We are listening to a much more complex polyphony involving the components of the digital sensing technology, the tree, the gases in the atmosphere, and the biological (breathing) and cultural processes (cars, factories and coal fired power stations) that produce these gases. Figure 3: Reiko Goto and Tim Collins, Plein Air, 2010 As both Don Ihde and Steven Connor have pointed out, the air that we breathe is not neutral. It is, on the contrary, given its significance in technology, sound, and voice. Taking this further, we might understand sensing technology as conditioning the air with information. This type of air conditioning—as information alters the condition of air—occurs as technology picks up, detects, and makes sensible phenomena in the atmosphere. While communication media such as the telegraph and other electronic information distribution systems may have distanced information from nature, the sensing technology experimentally applied by EcoArtTech, Preeemptive Media, and Goto and Collins, may remind us of the materiality of air. These technologies allow us to connect to the atmosphere; they reformulate it, converting it to information, giving new form to the coded processes in nature.AcknowledgmentAll images reproduced with the kind permission of the artists. References Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Maden: Polity Press, 2009. 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