Presenting… Post-Containment! Come celebrate an incredible 7x7 day for @rhizomedotorg with a beautiful night of sound and visuals.
Hosted at @resound_newyork at @hero__nyc
Co-hosted by @grayareaorg , @artw__rld , @alignmentchange , @artifice.nyc , @onwfwd .
w/additional curation from @bianjie.systems + @take.back.theinternet <3
Featuring performances/sets/visuals from… @hotemogf , @dorothycarlos , @deliabeat , @bianjie.systems , @loka.000 , and @duality.live
Post-Containment rhizome 7x7 after party
May 16, 2026 | 9:00 PM
NYC
Tickets: Link in bio
~~~
We’re proud to sponsor this year’s rhizome 7x7, Rhizome’s 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 New Museum in NYC tomorrow, May 16, 2026. Learn more at the link in bio!
Last week at Gray Area (@grayareaorg ), five artists shared their own AI models for the first time.
Dream Models brought together Arvida Byström (@arvidabystrom ), Huntrezz Janos (@huntrezz ), Lou Fauroux (@loufauroux ), Sharon Zheng (@sharon ), and Yvonne Fang (@_yvonnef_ ) to present custom models trained on their own visual worlds — each one distinct, strange, personal, and impossible to separate from the artist behind it.
Thank you to everyone who came out, experimented with the models, and stayed late talking with us. And thank you to Gray Area and curator Alice Scope (@alicescope ) for helping make space for this kind of work to exist publicly.
This is the future we want for creating with AI: not anonymous systems flattening culture, but tools shaped by real artistic perspectives and built to keep artists connected to the value their work creates.
𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐈𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 ☀️
Design poetic mini-games, build virtual worlds in Blender, create live audiovisual systems with code, experiment with AI collage, or perform a lecture on the web.
This summer’s workshops and intensive courses are led by artists and practitioners working across game design, experimental media, music, creative coding, and networked performance.
𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓼𝓮𝓼
✶ Expressive Systems: Making Poetic Mini-Games in PICO-8
with Tonz Beglari @scrollingpistachio
✶ Hybrid Live Coding: Designing Systems for Audiovisual Performance
with Roxanne Harris @alsoknownasrox
✶ Personal Worldbuilding with 3D Modeling in Blender
with Claudia Miranda @ghostmeat
𝓦𝓸𝓻𝓴𝓼𝓱𝓸𝓹𝓼
✶ Strange Anatomy: Exquisite Corpses with Fuser Compositor and Creative Code
with Laure Michelon @laure_michelon@fuserstudio
✶ Lecture Performance on the Web
with Taeyoon Choi @drwngdrwng
✶ Techno Improvisation with Beat DJ
with Nes Croft @nes.croft
~
Become a Gray Area Member: Education perks start at the Co-Creator level, including 20% off workshops, discounts on intensive courses, early access to registration, and free entry to events for you + guest.
Links in bio!
#onlineworkshop #creativetechnology #creativecoding #gamedesign #blender3d #livecoding #generativeart #electronicmusic
I will present brand new material at the DATA/LOSS showcase at GRAY AREA SF on May 23.
Head over to grayarea dot org for info and tickets
#electronicmusic #rhythmicnoise #noise
Media arts educators, we want to hear from you!
If you teach art, creative technology, media arts, writing, design, architecture, games, sound, curation/research, or related fields, we’d love your perspective on how AI tools are changing the classroom and studio.
Gray Area is partnering with researchers to document how artist-educators are adapting in real time. The survey takes less than 5 minutes.
(And as a thank you, pick up a free Moleskine journal next time you’re at Gray Area)
Share your perspective → bit.ly/pedagogy-after-AI (Link in bio)
Join us on May 30th in San Francisco for an evening of community, solidarity, and action in support of our medical solidarity work in Palestine 🇵🇸
We’re excited to announce Tommy Marcus as the second speaker in our lineup. Tommy will be joining the evening as part of a special panel discussion alongside other voices committed to justice, advocacy, and collective action for Palestine.
The evening will also feature additional speakers, local vendors, and opportunities to connect with community members dedicated to the cause.
If you’re in the Bay Area, we hope you’ll join us as we come together to raise critical funds and stand in solidarity with Palestine.
📍 San Francisco: Gray Area Theatre
📅 May 30, 12:00 to 5:30pm
TICKET LINK IN BIO
🌀 Save the Date 🌀
Max Cooper @maxcoopermax returns to Gray Area for 2 nights of 3D/AV Live, his immersive audiovisual performance system.
July 16 + 17, 2026
21+
📍 Gray Area / Grand Theater, SF
Customized to each venue, 3D/AV Live transforms architecture and space into sculptures of light and sound. Featuring his latest album "Feeling Is Structure" and music from across his catalog, exploring the human experience through sound.
🎟 Sign up for first access to tickets: https://maxcooper.os.fan/sign-up-for-first-tickets (link in bio)
More soon!
What does it mean to own an image, when the image no longer points back to anything real?
This weekend, at @grayareaorg , we got five different answers.
Thank you to Arvida Byström (@arvidabystrom ), Huntrezz Janos (@huntrezz ), Lou Fauroux (@loufauroux ), Sharon Zheng (@sharon ), and Yvonne Fang (@_yvonnef_ ) for sharing the custom models they trained with TITLES, and to Alice Scope (@alicescope ) for bringing the evening together.
“What surprised me was how immersive and focused I became.”
At the Department of Species Services, visitors step into the role of human pollination technicians — manually transferring pollen between California poppy flowers in response to pollinator decline.
Some people move carefully.
Some become unexpectedly emotional.
Some don’t want to stop.
What begins as a simple task slowly shifts into something else:
attention,
care,
and ecological labor.
___
Visit Gray Area in San Francisco to find your match and enter the system.
On view through 5/9 @grayareaorg
___
· @shihan.design Director & Design Futurist
· @mingyong_art Creative Technologist & New Media Artist, UC San Diego
· @hanzhangpqqo Interactive Engineer & Computer Musician, UC San Diego
· @clclem.liu Visual Artist
· Jiaye Leng AI Engineer & Researcher, CityU of Hong Kong
· @abigail.moves Dancer & Choreographer
· Neal Williams Consulting Pollination Ecologist, UC Davis
Curators:
· @habitualtruant
· @hwkns.art
· @exteeng
___ #FutureOfWork #Ecology #SpeculativeDesign #MoreThanHuman #NewMediaArt
GRAY AREA SF, 5/23/26, 8PM
DATA/LOSS showcase “Erosion of Form”
with
MALARKI
HEMADAXIS
NUNDALE
ERIC SCHLAPPI
THOABATH
and visual curation by ARSON RIVVERS
Get your tickets now at grayarea dot org or follow link in bio
#electronicmusic #industrialmusic #liveelectronicmusic #liveshow #errorgrid
(For) You, Optimized at Gray Area last month .✦ ݁
A larger-than-life feed of algorithmically generated self-help text, built from the most highlighted passages in bestselling Kindle books on productivity, success, and personal transformation. These excerpts have already been picked out and saved by thousands of readers each, so they’re like condensed little pieces of aspiration, whole books reduced to quick, motivational takeaways. The Markov chain then remixes that material into an endless stream of synthetic advice that sounds convincing at first, but starts to slip between making sense and total emptiness. Traces of the original source texts remain beneath the feed, surfacing the collective habits, desires, and interactions of the people who highlighted them. I was interested in optimization as a cultural logic, how it shows up in self-help and AI through these constant promises of transformation, productivity, and improvement.
There’s also a stat that people spend < 30s looking at an artwork in a museum. So I was thinking a lot about whether familiar dark patterns–like infinite scroll, soft gradients, and the smooth, addictive logic of social media–can be redeployed for a different purpose… if these are the same mechanics that keep us scrolling on our phones, could they also hold us in front of an artwork for longer? Long enough to confront the ways these technologies shape our attention, behavior, and identities?
Huge thank you to the curators of @local.memory@hwkns.art@exteeng@_t__sy and @habitualtruant@grayareaorg staff for the space and support!!!
Video documentation by Jun (@ilovemytransfriends )
⋆˙⟡ ⋆ ₊⟡ ⋆
#generativeart #artexhibit #newmediaartist #socialmedia #selfhelp
SAN FRANCISCO — JOIN US FOR OUR FIRST EVER EVENT IN THE BAY AREA! 🌉
On May 30, Glia is bringing together the Bay Area community to inspire unique ways of pooling knowledge, resources, and capital to scale durable med-tech solutions for Gaza’s destroyed healthcare systems.
The event will feature:
👉A keynote conversation with Alana Hadid
👉Reflections from Dr. Tarek Loubani following his frontline medical work and recent return from Gaza
👉A live panel featuring Alana Hadid, Tommy [email protected] , Lara Kiswani, and Bridget Rochios, moderated by Nora Barrows-Friedman
👉A curated art auction and live fundraiser
👉A local vendor market and served appetizers from Lulu’s, a local Palestinian restaurant
Ticket sales are donations toward Glia’s life-saving medical projects in Gaza. 🏥
📍 Gray Area Theatre, San Francisco
🗓️ May 30, 2026 | 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
🎟️ Tickets live now! LINK IN BIO
Gray Area is a San Francisco-based nonprofit cultural incubator and serves as the fiscal sponsor for Glia, supporting its work through nonprofit infrastructure and administrative stewardship.
