USA Projects

Andrea Polli's interdisciplinary and public artwork investigates the social and ecological impacts of media and technology. Her work has been presented widely in hundreds of  presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally, has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies and awards including a NYFA Artist's Fellowship, the Fulbright Specialist Award and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts and others. Her recent book-length collection of essays, Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles, is published on Intellect Press.  She has also published several book chapters, audio CDs, DVDs and papers in print including MIT Press and Cambridge University Press journals.

She works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification).  Projects include: a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; a series of sonifications of climate in Central Park; and a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. In 2007/2008 she spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded project.

She received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Doctorate in practice-based arts research from the University of Plymouth, UK.

Polli is currently an Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering at The University of New Mexico and Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media at the University.  She served as the founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program and as Director of ARTS Lab at the University from 2009-2010. From 2005-2008 she served as the Director of the Integrated Media Arts Master of Fine Arts Program at Hunter College/CUNY.  In 2000, she was voted Teacher of the Year at Columbia College in Chicago in recognition of her work connecting students to the wider community through collaborative projects.   These projects included performances and exhibitions at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and a large scale public art project connecting 5 neighborhood arts organizations with live web streaming, an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center and six billboards.   Pause. was featured as the Millennium Community Artwork for Illinois and funded by The Mid Atlantic Arts Council and Ameritech.

From 2006-2009 she was co-chair of the Leonardo Education Forum, an affiliate of the MIT Press and the College Art Association of America (CAA) that promotes the advancement of research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology and from 2004-2008 she was co-chair of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, a multi-disciplinary group exploring the urban sound environment and a chapter of the American and World Forums for Acoustic Ecology, for which she now serves as Vice-President.