Friday and Saturday morning begin with inspiring keynotes which lead into panel discussions and lectures discussing civic engagement, media arts education, creative coding practices, and arts incubation. The entire conference program brings together a set of individuals who are shaping how art is created and consumed in the digital era, and how technology development and artistic practice can address the global issues facing our society.
On Day 1 of the Conference, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder, Tiffany Shlain inaugurates a full day of lectures and discussions that survey culture through the lens of art and technology. The Friday program consists of multiple panels and talks covering topics pertinent to all corners of the digital arts, closing with a riveting keynote on Contexts for Media by an expert on the history/technique of drawing technologies, Pablo Garcia.
On Day 2 of the Conference, we welcome historian, author, and co-founder/designer of the Prelinger Library, Megan Prelinger discussion the history of Art and Invention in the 20th century. After a second day of thought and discussion, we close the 2016 Gray Area Festival Conference with seminal media theorist Gene Youngblood, lauded as a “true revolutionary” and singular thinker in the history of art criticism, delivering a lecture on radical politics drawing on the culmination of his life’s work as a media theorist.