41 Performative Measure

To collect information on breath in the form of data requires accounting for the multidimensional nature of breathing.1 Breathing is both voluntary and involuntary, managed unconsciously in a manner that can be overruled by conscious breath control. In neuroimaging, this manifests as activity in different parts of the brain. Breath also consists of both external respiration, in which gases are transferred between the respiratory organs and the outer environment, and internal respiration, which occurs at a cellular level. In this sense, breath represents the body at its most permeable. A gas saturated with water that can undergo state changes, breath has a robust and sometimes visible life outside of the body as force, heat, and moisture. But it goes the other way too—as I was writing during the 2017 Northern California wildfires, in the time it took me to alternate grieving over the thick air outside with putting three thousand words on-screen, 210,217 acres burned, and I felt the particulate matter of people's lives in my chest with each breath.