GAFFTA
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supporting art and technology for social good in San Francisco, California. Gray Area hosts exhibitions and music events, software and electronics classes, a media lab and resident-artist program. Gray Area Foundation for the Arts’ stated purpose is to bring “together the best creative coders, data artists, designers, and makers to create experiments that build social consciousness through digital culture.”
Founded in 2006 by its Executive Director Josette Melchor and Board Chairman Peter Hirshberg, Gray Area joins similarly focused institutions, like Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Ars Electronica, in promoting the intersections of art, technology and community by working to produce, exhibit, and develop the creative technical skills that allow for experimentation with and exploration of the most contemporary technologies.
Following a conversation in 2006 about the lack of proper venues for the exhibition of new media and technology based art work, Melchor and Hirshberg initially opened Gray Area Gallery in San Francisco's South of Market (SoMa). By 2008, the gallery incorporated as a non-profit and was renamed Gray Area Foundation for The Arts. In June 2009, Gray Area relocated to its present facility near the end of Taylor Street . In total, the 8,000-square-foot (740 m2) location had included in addition to the pornography arcade, a bar (Club 65) and liquor store. Leased from property owner Jack Sumski, the space allowed Gray Area to expand its well-established exhibition platform to include artist residencies, educational workshops and symposiums, growing Gray Area into the comprehensive and integrated center for the creation and promotion of technology-based art it is today.
When the Art Theatres pornography arcade that had been there since the 1970s moved out, Sumski decided that "it was time to do something in my old age, to get something going, and give the Tenderloin a future" and invested heavily to prepare the site for Gray Area. Gray Area Foundation for The Arts is part of a coalition of city agencies, arts organizations and community service providers seeking to revitalize a neighborhood that has historically struggled with the effects of substance abuse, addiction and poverty.
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