Brooke Singer and Preemptive Media
www.bsing.net
Brooke Singer is a digital media artist who lives in New York City. Her most recent collaborations have utilized wireless communications (Wi-Fi, mobile phone cameras, RFID) to initiate discussion and positive system failures. She likes to work with emerging technologies not only because they are fun but also because they are contingent and malleable. She is co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media.
Singer was the recipient of one of five Program Excellence Scholarships for the ARAC 2006 workshop taught by Camille Utterback, "Responding to Gestures and Bodies: Understanding Human Movement in Interactive Art".
AIR is a public, social experiment in which people are invited to use Preemptive Media's portable air monitoring devices to explore their neighborhoods and urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots.
Participants or "carriers" are able to see pollutant levels in their current locations, as well as simultaneously view measurements from the other AIR devices in the network. An on-board GPS unit and digital compass, combined with a database of known pollution sources such as power plants and heavy industries, allow carriers to see their distance from polluters as well. The AIR devices regularly transmit data to a central database allowing for real time data visualization on this website.
While AIR is designed to be a tool for individuals and groups to self identify pollution sources, it also serves as a platform to discuss energy politics and their impact on environment, health and social groups in specific regions.
