Singer

Media artist and activist Brooke Singer will speak on "Reshaping the Wireless Commons" in a public lecture at 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 6, at Cornell University's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Singer is an assistant professor of new media at SUNY Purchase, where she has developed a course in Internet as Public Art. She lives in Brooklyn and works with emerging technologies as tools to initiate discussion of their uses and implications, and to bring about positive system failure. Her recent projects as an artist and curator have centered on wireless technology including Wi-Fi, mobile phone cameras and radio frequency identification tags (RFID) now used on some consumer products and library books.

She is a co-founder of Preemptive Media http://www.preemptivemedia.net, a group of artists, activists and technologists peforming beta tests and impact assessments based on independent research. One Preemptive project, a traveling performance installation called "Swipe," demonstrates how bars and other businesses in the United States can collect personal data from drivers' licenses. Singer also co-curated Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City, in October 2004 in lower Manhattan. The three-day event showcased diverse ways that mobile communication is transforming everyday life, and how it can be used to generate urban experiences and a public voice.

Singer is currently at Cornell attending the School of Criticism and Theory (SCT) and its 29th summer session. Her lecture is cosponsored by the SCT and by Ithaca College's Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.