GRAY AREA - Key Persons
A San Francisco native, Andre has been producing music for over a decade and holds a degree in audio production and recording. With a background in education, Andre has mentored youth in the Bay Area helping them find their voice in electronic music.
He's an active member of the local electronic music community, co-founding a local record label and event crew, Cult Freq. Cult Freq explores forward-thinking electronic music while uplifting local talent.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Governance Board
An entrepreneur at the forefront of marketing, branding, positioning and communicating "The Next Big Thing," Andy Cunningham has played a key role in the launch of a number of new categories including video games; personal computers; desktop publishing; digital imaging; RISC microprocessors; software as a service; very light jets; and clean tech investing. She is an expert in creating and executing marketing, branding and communication strategies that accelerate growth, increase shareholder value and advance corporate reputation. Andy serves on the following corporate boards: MixR (workplace community building software); Motiv Power Systems (electric vehicles); Onclusive (PR analytics); Specialized Bicycle Components, Inc. (bicycles and related gear); and Woodward Communications, Inc. (media and marketing services). She also serves as a trustee of The Aspen Institute (since 2000) and Menlo College (since 2014). Andy serves on the following not-for-profit advisory boards: UNICEF; Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications; and ZERO1: The Art & Technology Network, an organization she founded in 2000 with the mission to shape the future at the intersection of art and technology. She also serves on the Freeman Design Council, a "special forces" unit of The Freeman Company.
Job Titles:
- Artistic Director
- Executive
- Member of the Governance Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Education Program Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Governance Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Stamen 's Founder and Creative Director
Eric Rodenbeck is Stamen's founder and creative director. He has been working in and on and around interactive design since 1997, working to extend the boundaries of online media and live information visualization.
Eric led the interactive storytelling and data-driven narrative effort at Quokka Sports, illustrated and designed at Wired Magazine and Wired Books, and was a co-founder of the design collective Umwow. He is a sought-after speaker and has lectured and spoken at Yale University, Columbia University, the University of Southern California, numerous O'Reilly technology conferences, Esther Dyson's PC Forum, OFF in Barcelona, Lift in Jeju, South Korea, and South by Southwest, among others.
Eric was born in New York City, where he studied architecture at Cooper Union, put himself through school by drawing plans for office spaces at the World Trade Center, managing numerous New York farmers' markets, drafting architectural ornaments in the stoneyard of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and working summers for Kenneth Snelson. He received a B.A. in the History and Philosophy of Technology from The New School for Social Research in 1994. In 2008 he was named one of Esquire Magazine's "Best and Brightest" new designers and thinkers, and one of ID Magazine's top 40 designers to watch. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and he sits on the Board of Directors of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Fabien Beckers is a serial entrepreneur committed to solving global problems that impact human lives. He received his PhD from Cambridge University, as well as a Masters from Stanford Graduate School of Business. As CEO he built one of the first cloud-AI platforms for diagnostic imaging and clinical diagnostics. Fabien disrupted the healthcare ecosystem using cloud to unlock data driven medicine ahead of his time. His company created 5 FDA-cleared products, the first open innovation platform, an AI marketplace, and launched a new method to transform how newborns with heart defects are diagnosed. Outside of work, he has traveled the world capturing life's precious moments through his photography and is passionate about social innovation stemming from the intersection of arts and science.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Artist, Researcher
Joel Slayton is a pioneering artist, researcher, and curator with over 35 years of experience involving art and technology. His work engages a wide range of practice including media, installation and performance and has been featured in over 100 exhibitions around the world. Joel is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he was Founding Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media. Joel Slayton was 2018-2019 Stanford University Sterling Visiting Scholar in Department of Chemical Sysems and Biology in the School of Medicine. Joel was curator for the 5th LAST Festival Exhibition at the SLAC National Accelerator at Stanford University in 2018. From 2008-2016 Joel was Executive Director of ZERO1, a Silicon Valley based arts organization where he was responsible for the ZERO1 Biennial, an international exhibition program celebrating creativity and innovation in the arts. Joel serves on the Board of Directors of LEONARDO/ISAST (International Society for Arts, Science, and Technology) where he founded the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series in 1999 and is a Senior Fellow of the Silicon Valley American Leadership Forum.
Job Titles:
- Communications Director
- Artist
Joy is an artist and creative computer scientist. At Gray Area, they are the Communications Director, managing media relations, marketing and community outreach efforts. For 7 years, Joy worked as a product manager in the tech industry, from launching offline support in Google Maps to leading efforts at Twitter to analyze, understand and reduce harm the harm of fake news and misinformation on the platform. For the past three years, they lived and worked in Tokyo, leading creative content strategy for several startups, building an artist co-working community, and organizing the Woven Media Festival, a showcase of international artists living in Japan. In San Francisco, they support the Galallery and Secret Alley as a curator and artist, and is passionate about building, maintaining and activating community towards social impact.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects
Kamal Sinclair is the Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects and Senior Consultant to Sundance Institute. She serves as External Advisor to MacArthur Foundation's Journalism & Media Program, Creative Advisor to For Freedoms, MIT's Center for Advanced Virtuality, Starfish Accelerator and Eyebeam. Previously she was Director of Sundance Institute's New Frontier Lab Programs. She was commissioned by Ford Foundation's JustFilms to research equality in emerging media, which resulted in "Making a New Reality."
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Kathleen Forde is the inaugural curator for PaceX, a new initiative spearheaded by Pace Gallery, dedicated to art, technology, and the meaningful presentation of experiential art.
Prior to PaceX, Forde was the Artistic Director at Large for Borusan Contemporary, a collection-based space for media arts exhibitions, commissions, and public programming in Istanbul. Concurrently Forde was working as an independent curator with various institutions both nationally and abroad, including the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, and Audemars Piguet on their annual art commission in collaboration with Art Basel Miami Beach.
Prior to EMPAC, Forde was the Curatorial Director for Live Arts and New Media at the Goethe Institut Internaciones in Berlin and Munich. As Curatorial Associate and then Assistant Curator for Media Arts at SFMOMA (1999-2002), she co-curated the interdisciplinary show 010101: Art in Technological Times in addition to ongoing work with both temporary and permanent collection exhibitions.
She has also written and/or curated on a freelance basis for various organizations that have included the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology; The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA); Independent Curators International; The Transmediale Festival, Berlin; Kunstverein Dusseldorf and Cologne; VideoZone, Tel Aviv; the Rotterdam Film Festival; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In 2010 Forde was a fellow in the 2010 Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) fellowship class and held an Alexander von Humboldt research scholarship in Berlin from 2002-2003. She earned an MA in Post-1945 Art and Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a BA in Communications and Art History from the Loyola College of Maryland.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Interim Education Director
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Producer, Inventor
Michael Naimark is a producer, inventor, and scholar in the fields of virtual reality and new media art. He is best known for his work in projection mapping, virtual travel, live global video, and cultural preservation, and refers to this body of work as "place representation." His work has been seen in over 300 art exhibitions, film festivals, and presentations around the world, and he has been awarded 16 patents relating to cameras, display, haptics, and live. Michael has directed projects with support from Apple, Disney, Atari, Panavision, Lucasfilm, Interval, and Google; and from National Geographic, UNESCO, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Exploratorium, the Banff Centre, Ars Electronica, the ZKM, and the Paris Metro. Since 2009, he has served as faculty at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, USC Cinema's Interactive Media Division, and the MIT Media Lab. In 2015, Naimark was appointed Google's first-ever "resident artist" in their new VR division, and since Fall 2017, he is Visiting Associate Arts Professor at NYU Shanghai, to teach VR / AR "Fundamentals" and learn about VR / AR in China.
Nadav Hochman is Gray Area's Associate Director. Hochman spent the past two decades working at the intersection of art, technology, and society facilitating creative collaborations between global artists, designers, industry partners, and research institutions. His work has been exhibited in MoMA (NYC), SXSW, Google Zeitgeist, and featured in media outlets such as Popular Science, The Atlantic, Wired, and The Guardian. He also serves as an advisor, jury member, and mentor to international institutions such as Ars Electronica.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Communication at Stanford University
Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author of three books: The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties (University of Chicago Press, 2013); From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory (Anchor/Doubleday, 1996; 2nd ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Before coming to Stanford, he taught Communication at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and MIT's Sloan School of Management. He also worked for ten years as a journalist. He has written for newspapers and magazines ranging from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine to Harper's.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Governance Board
- Board Chair and Founding Board Member
- Founder of Goodmail Systems
Peter Hirshberg is at the epicenter of the noisy, connected world of online conversation. He is changing our thinking about marketing, branding and customer relationships. A Silicon Valley executive with several high profile marketing and branding related ventures, Peter has led emerging media and technology companies at the center of disruptive change for more than 20 years.
He is Co-Founder and Chairman of The Conversation Group, a fast growing agency helping brands with strategy and marketing in a world of empowered and connected audiences and customers. Peter is also Chairman of the board of advisers of Technorati, the leading aggregator of user generated content in the world, tracking over 100 million Weblogs and 70,000 posts per hour.
Previously Hirshberg served as president and CEO of Gloss.com, the online prestige beauty business co-owned by Estee Lauder Companies, Chanel and Clarins; he was Chairman of Interpacket Networks, the global leader in Internet-by-satellite (sold to American Tower in 2000), and was founder and CEO of Elemental Software (sold to Macromedia in 1999).
During a nine-year tenure at Apple Computer, Hirshberg headed Enterprise Marketing, where he grew Apple's large business and government revenue to $1 billion annually and helped lead the company's entry into the online service arena. After leaving Apple, Hirshberg's new-media strategy firm served clients including America Online, Microsoft, NBC Television Network, Estee Lauder, Pacific Bell and Silicon Graphics.
Hirshberg is a founder of Goodmail Systems, a board member of ICTV, and serves on the advisory boards of start-ups Ideeli and Aniboom. He is a Trustee of The Computer History Museum and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Peter earned his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College and his MBA at Wharton.
Seabrook Gubbins is the Production Director at Gray Area. He believes in the power of community and activates Gray Area's Grand Theater in San Francisco's Mission District with local cultural organizers and partners. With over a decade of experience producing media art experiences, he brings his expertise in executing large-scale multimedia installations and live audiovisual performances by internationally renowned artists. Through his work in the silviculture industry, he has honed his skills in fabrication and production, transforming his environmental knowledge to building media exhibitions. His production skills run the gamut from engineering live spatial sound performances to projection mapping sculptural video installations to fabricating built environments.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Associate Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
Sophie Lamparter is Associate Director at swissnex San Francisco, a public-private partnership to connect Switzerland and the US in the areas of science, technology, art and innovation. Based in San Francisco since 2011, Sophie Lamparter is responsible for defining the interdisciplinary programs, which lie at the intersection of art/technology and art/science.
She has organized and curated exhibitions and programs in media, digital and data arts, interaction/experience, game design, architecture and urbanism. She is passionate about the power of dialogue, likes to connect people and good ideas and is always looking for new ways of doing so.
As a Bay Area Native, Tiffany Yau is passionate about discovering new ways to support artists in San Francisco's constantly evolving landscape. She spends her time cultivating creative communities, from community organizing at alternative art spaces focusing on local artists to curating art for virtual art platforms. Inspired by models for sustainable arts ecosystems, she brings her experience as a creative producer to her current role at Gray Area.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Governance Board
- Partner at Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang is a Partner at Mayfield Fund, focusing on venture capital invests in Consumer Internet, Digital Media, eCommerce/Marketplaces and Health/Wellness. He has been twice named on the Midas List of top 100 VCs. Tim led Mayfield's investments in MOAT (acquired by Oracle), Basis (acquired by Intel), Fitmob (acquired by Classpass), Tonal Fitness, Grove Collaborative, and Drop.com and TRIPP. Tim was previously a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, where he led NVP's investment in Playdom (acquired by Disney), ngmoco (acquired by DeNA), AdChina (acquired by Alibaba), PCH International, and Lumosity. Prior to joining Norwest, Tim was a Principal at Gabriel Venture Partners, where he established and led their wireless practice, investing and joining the board of Iridigm Display (acquired by Qualcomm). He was also actively involved with the boards of Placeware (acquired by Microsoft), IPWireless (acquired by NextWave) and NextG Networks (acquired by private equity syndicate). Before entering the venture capital industry, Tim was a Product Manager at Gateway, where he launched Enterprise products into the Japanese market, and began his career as a tri-lingual development engineer for General Motors, working across China, Korea, and Japan. Tim received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class as an Arjay Miller Scholar. He also holds an MSEE and BSEE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where he was a Departmental Scholar and received full fellowship.
Tim is an active musician and performs with the musical acts BlackMahal, Coverflow and RainbowParty.
He is also passionate about tech-driven immersive art experiences that shift and expand empathy, compassion and consciousness, and enjoys collecting LED and lighting art.
Job Titles:
- Associate Curator & Community Manager