Laura Chipley is a Queens based multimedia artist whose recent projects include ‘The Newtown Creek Armada’ – an interactive boat pond created in a New York Superfund site and The Appalachian Mountaintop Patrol, a collaborative, environmental watchdog and multimedia education initiative that works with West Virginia environmental activists to use documentary filmmaking, drones, environmental sensors and surveillance technology to chronicle the effects of Mountaintop Removal coal mining. Laura’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal and Wired Magazine. Her projects have been supported by organizations such as Art Matters, the Hudson River Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Laura was awarded an A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art in 2015, and received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Projects for the Public Grant in 2020 and 2024. She is currently an Associate Professor of Media & Communications at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

Samara Smith works at the intersection of documentary, social practice, and emerging technology. Her work often explores, and is experienced in, public space. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Projects for the Public Grant in 2020 and 2024. In 2016, she produced Central Park: Democratic Playground, a GPS-triggered soundwalk narrated by former parks commission Adrian Benepe, for the Detour App. Her media projects have been experienced in public spaces in Greensboro, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Brooklyn and beyond, and exhibited at museums, galleries and festivals–Hammer Museum, New York Transit Museum, Queens Museum, Elsewhere Museum, Open Source Gallery, Open Engagement, Conflux Festival, Fabric of Freedom, and more. At SUNY Old Westbury, where she Smith teaches documentary, journalism and emerging media, she co-founded the Media Innovation Center. In 2022, she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Service.