Andrea Polli is a Professor with appointments in the College of Fine Arts and School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She holds the Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media and directs the Social Media Workgroup, a lab at the University's Center for Advanced Research Computing. As an educator, Polli has created student-centered professional development, theory, practice and field-based courses and experiences for practicing artists, engineers and makers.
Polli is an environmental artist working at the intersection of art, science and technology. Her interdisciplinary research has been presented as public artworks, media installations, community projects, performances, broadcasts, mobile and geolocative media, publications, and through the curation and organization of public exhibitions and events. She creates artworks designed to raise awareness of environmental issues. Often these works express scientific data obtained through her collaborations with scientists and engineers and have taken the form of sound art, vehicle-based works, public light works, mobile media experiences, and bio-art and design. Polli holds an MFA in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in practice-led research from the University of Plymouth in the UK.
Her artwork and research has received major support from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Fulbright among others, including support for two over $1.5 million projects: the NEA and Intel-supported ISEA2012: Machine Wilderness Symposium for which she served as Artistic Director, and a 5-year NSF Division of Chemistry project titled Sustainable Energy Pathways in Engineering and Technology (SEPTET) for which she was a Co-Principal Investigator.
She co-edited the book Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles published on Intellect Press and authored Hack the Grid published by the Carnegie Museum of Art, and has written and published eight book chapters and entries, 20 journal articles and conference papers, and several short editorial essays, curatorial statements.