Brooke Singer
Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, Brooke Singer is also Designer in Residence at the New York Hall of Science (2018-2019), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co-founder of La Casita Verde (2013-).
Brooke engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, workshops, photographs, maps, installations and performances that frequently involves public participation in pursuit of social change.
National and international exhibitions include MoMA/PS1, Warhol Museum of Art, The Banff Centre, Neuberger Museum of Art, Matadero Madrid, Diverseworks and The Whitney Artport. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Microsoft and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy. Brooke has received awards from the Open Society Foundations, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Helsinki International Artist Program, Headlands Center for Arts, Patagonia, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, among others.
When asked about her career trajectory, Brooke said, “My background is in photography but while studying at Carnegie Mellon University in the MFA studio art program I became more interested in emerging technologies, research-based practice and tactical media. My work is often collaborative and transdisciplinary. I am interested in art as a social force and means to reconfigure our built environments.”
The Carbon Sponge Project
Currently, Brooke is working on a project called Carbon Sponge, which she initiated in 2018 as a Designer in Residence at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Corona Park, Queens.
Describing the work, Brooke said: “The project examines the ability of urban soils to sequester carbon and mitigate anthropogenic climate change. With a team of collaborators that span disciplines (i.e. art, ecology, science) and institutional affiliations, I have built 24 Carbon Sponge pilot plots at NYSCI with a variety of planting combinations and we are developing kits and protocols so that anybody, especially non-scientists, can track the increase or decrease of carbon in soil over time. Our preliminary results from 2018 will influence the design of new Carbon Sponge plots planned for Brooklyn, NY, in spring 2019.”
Teaching Outside the Classroom
In addition to the Art + Technology and Critical Pedagogy as Art Form courses Brooke is teaching this semester, she is teaching a course in the Media Arts & Culture MFA program called Media Arts Practice, adding “I like to teach outside the classroom as much as possible.” Describing the course, Brooke said: “We are embedded in the Yonkers Public Library and thinking about what it means to make art in public spaces and in collaboration with non-artists. I was partially inspired by the fact that New York City libraries have more users than major professional sports, performing arts, museums, gardens and zoos—combined!”
Written by Susan Kouguell, Lecturer in Screenwriting