San Francisco once viewed technology as a civic and consciousness building medium — something that could enable collective cultural expression. In @palladiummag, @notscottmoore and I trace how that spirit atrophied — and how artists might help renew it.

A rat done bit my sister Nell

Art Basel, PACE, and Venice Biennale will no longer be so damn relevant

Happy Birthday Pauline Oliveros

📣 Calling all media arts teachers and artist-educators! Gray Area is partnering with academic researchers to better understand how generative AI is reshaping media arts education, teaching practices, and creative learning environments. We invite media arts educators and professionals to participate in a short survey exploring how AI tools are impacting learning, instructional methods, and the future of education. Conducted by Alm Chung in collaboration with Gray Area, this research will inform an upcoming web report on the evolving relationship between generative AI and media arts education. Whether your experience with AI has been positive, negative, or mixed, we want to hear from you. Your perspective will help shape ongoing research into how educators are adapting to the era of GenAI. This project is supported by an NEA Research Grants in the Arts award. 🔗 Survey link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…

This is gonna be so fun

Never forget that YOU are a data center. Drink some water!!

Latte art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable

HBD! Bassel Khartabil would be 45 today. Open‑hardware pioneer, Wikimedia contributor, and co‑founder of New Palmyra — with unreleased letters, drives and notes that could still reshape heritage preservation and open tech. Honor him: edit, share, build. basselkhartabil.org/2026/05/…

hop on hop off sales spike to historical levels with ex meta employees seeing the city for the first time since moving here

INDEX is a project I have been developing over the last few months; it was installed in NYC at our event in collaboration with @GrayAreaorg and @FWBtweets, and was also shown as a live visual performance variation at Rockefeller Centre last week for the closing of @rhizome 7x7. The project critically examines the relationship between technology and economy through the lens of digital frameworks and language. It is a project about the dynamics of metadata containment and the production of information as a dynamic movement. INDEX is a piece that forms part of a much larger project, and is the result of years of research and production. It has a strong philosophical grounding. If you’d like to see it or find more about it, my DMs are open. This piece is also available for sale.

A first sneak peek at the 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐫𝐞𝐚 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞! Four artists made works concerning emotional inheritance, personal mythology, mourning, transformation, and the construction of selfhood through symbolic or ritualized experiences. Wolf Boxuan Chen uses a fairy-tale dance game to interrogate purity, violence, symbolic roles, and suffering beneath idealized narratives in their project “Blood, Snow and Ebony.” Lizzie Suh invites participants to reflect on identity, memory, grief, and transformation while still in the process of becoming in their piece “In Present Memoriam.” Through a series of questions, the work generates symbolic portraits using an AI model trained on the artist’s own paintings, blending machine generation with a distinctly human artistic voice. Connie Liu examines local Chinese burial traditions in Bay Area cemeteries in their installation “Daytrip to Colma.” Sifting through genealogy records originally assembled by the U.S. government to investigate immigration fraud from Hoisan, the project reflects on the contemporary practice of descendants seeking traces of their ancestral origins through gravestones amid generations of separation, anti-immigration, language loss, and diminished Chinese literacy. Tracy Jones reframes procrastination as a reflection of grief, overwhelm, and productivity culture in their piece “Procrastination.” Visitors contribute their own procrastinations to a living system that transforms them into immersive visuals and sound. See all their projects and more at the Creative Code Showcase! 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐫𝐞𝐚 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞 📍 Gray Area / Grand Theater 📅 May 20 – 21, 2026 May 20 🥂 Member Preview Happy Hour: 6 – 7 PM 🥂 Public Hours: 7 – 10 PM May 21 Showcase Open Hours: 5 – 9 PM 🎟️ RSVP: grayarea.org/event/gray-area…

We’re proud to sponsor this year’s rhizome 7x7, @rhizome legendary gathering pairing 7 artists and 7 technologists to "make something new" together. 7x7 has long been a point of connection between internet art, experimental technology, and the people shaping culture around them. We're excited to support this year’s edition and the ongoing exchange between East Coast and West Coast creative communities. Curated by Rhizome, Neema Githere, and 邊界 (Ian Margo & Alexandre Montserrat | 世然), this year’s edition draws from Zoë Sofia’s writing to explore containment through themes of interdependence, care, and connection. 7x7 takes place at the @newmuseum in NYC tomorrow, May 16, 2026. Learn more: rhizome.org/editorial/7x7-20…

NEXT WEEK! 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 Experience immersive installations, interactive poetry, artistic games, and experimental digital environments created by artists, designers, and technologists from Gray Area’s flagship Creative Code Intensive. This year’s showcase features work by 13 participants exploring themes of connection, memory, surveillance, and cultural identity in a moment where AI increasingly shapes social interaction and the ways we relate to technology. Over two days, experience the work, meet the creators, and get inspired by emerging voices working across art and technology. 📍 Gray Area / Grand Theater 📅 May 20 – 21, 2026 Opening Night May 20 🥂 Member Preview Happy Hour: 6 – 7 PM 🥂 Public Hours: 7 – 10 PM Showcase Open Hours May 21 5 – 9 PM All ages Sliding scale admission: $0–30 Free for members Featuring work by: charles_irl Chih Yu Chen Connie Liu Dylan Peet Fabian Fabro Faraday Jeanette Andrews Lizzie Suh Sarah Alli SiQi He Theo Popov Tracy Jones Wolf Boxuan Chen Learn more and RSVP: grayarea.org/event/gray-area…

Killer investment opportunity for a16z: finding a more sustainable means of capitalizing technology innovation that allows space for leisure without requiring a global crisis killing a bunch of vulnerable people / public bailout to keep it in check

On 13 May, 邊界 will be hosting an evening gathering at @index_space_org Greenpoint, NYC, bringing together a cross-coastal group of artists, researchers, technologists and cultural intermediaries from New York and San Francisco. The event is designed to foster meaningful dialogue around the role of artistic practice in shaping how technical institutions, research communities, and public imaginaries intersect. With the support of @GrayAreaorg and @FWBtweets. We will be presenting @yalla_halim work, “Singulars”: a series of live poetry duels between a human poet and a machine. The audience votes to decide the winner, and their votes train the machine for future performances, helping poetry and machine reach, possibly, a new singularity. DM for more information!

vibe just shifted

San Francisco's knee-jerk aversion to any level of critique is the biggest threat to its ever finding cultural maturity

we must end the quirk chungus terrible creative technology project industrial complex (i’m in the @clereviewbooks today about the arts collaborations at Bell Labs and RAND in the 70s!)

Milady pfps are LinkedIn coded in 2026. They're all 26 years old and want to talk to you about digital strategy