Andrea Polli is an Environmental Artist and scholar working at the intersection of art, science, and technology, whose practice includes media performance and installation, public interventions, curation, and writing. She is a Professor of Art Studio with a joint appointment between Fine Arts and Engineering, the Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media at The University of New Mexico. She holds a doctorate in practice-led research from the University of Plymouth in the UK and an MFA in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Polli’s work with art/science, technology has been presented widely in exhibitions and performances internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies, and award,s including NYFA and UNESCO. Among other organizations, she has worked with the NASA/Goddard Institute Climate Research Group and the National Center for Atmospheric Research and her artwork and research has been funded by The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Fulbright including two over $1.5 million projects: the NEA-supported ISEA2012: Machine Wilderness.

Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts, and others. Her latest books are Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles and Hack the Grid.

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​Architectural design collaborator John Donalds' work combines media, architectural theory, and practice by designing fantastical spaces that blend futuristic materials and forms with traditional, buildable structures. A practicing digital media artist, in 2000, he had the opportunity to lead the design of high-end networked photography and video laboratory spaces at Oberlin College.  During this process, he discovered a passion for architectural practice and returned to school to pursue a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Syracuse where he combined his professional background in video and photography with his ideas for reframing physical and virtual space in his 2013 project Network Home. 

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As a collaborator, Donalds has produced significant bodies of work with photographer Julie Holcombe and sculptor Bill Gilbert.  In 2010, he was the project manager for a series of portals for DestinyUSA, the largest LEED Gold Certified commercial building in the US at the time.  He recently collaborated with landscape architect Catherine Harris and photographer Meridel Rubenstein to produce a model of a human wastewater garden planned for Iraq’s first national park at the conflux of the Tigres and Euphrates.  This project, Eden Again, was featured in the 2012 International Symposium for Electronic Art in Albuquerque.

Polli and Donalds began collaborating in 2012, when they visited intentional communities throughout the American Southwest and published a conversation about the architectural design and implications of such spaces for ARID: A Journal of Desert Art, Design and Ecology.  Their most recent work investigates microorganisms that live on and in human bodies, For example, the public work, the Biokitchen, hosted by Explora! for the opening reception of the international Association of Science and Technology Centers 2013 Conference and currently in use at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque NM, is a mobile, hybrid kitchen/biology laboratory mixing traditional building materials with living materials like microbial cellulose.

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