About
Bio
Short bio
Josette Melchor is a founder and cultural strategist whose work spans art, technology, cities, and responsible AI. She is the founder of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, the San Francisco nonprofit applying art and technology to social and civic impact, where she produced large-scale festivals, immersive performances, and DeepDream — the world's first neural-network × artist exhibition. At Google, she built the global placemaking and art-curation programs from the ground up, overseeing 1.5 million square feet of public space across six countries, and she previously led cultural programming for WeWork's future-cities initiative. Today she leads Newtemporary, a studio advising mission-driven organizations on emerging technology, spatial strategy, and social impact. She is a board member of the Burning Man Project and has been featured in Fast Company, Wired, and TechCrunch.
Long bio
Josette Melchor founded Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a leading San Francisco nonprofit applying art and technology to social and civic impact, and went on to lead global placemaking at Google. Before Google, she was Head of Cultural Programming for WeWork’s future-cities initiative. Across her career she has built community-engagement models at the civic edge of art and technology — designing programs, raising money, and producing work that didn’t yet have a category.
As a community organizer, she partners with cities to address civic issues through public activations like the Urban Prototyping Festival. As an executive director, she built sustainable revenue models to stabilize organizations and led fundraising to revive the historic Grand Theater as an 800-person venue in the Mission District, as well as the Oakland Fire Fund supporting hundreds of people affected by the Ghostship tragedy. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Wired, and TechCrunch.
As a curator, she instigated the first exhibition pairing artificial neural networks with artists — work that helped establish the Artists and Machine Intelligence program at Google. At Gray Area, she developed the Knight Foundation-supported Experiential Space Research Lab, creating sustainable models for artists working in the fast-evolving format of immersive experiences.
Gifted her first set of turntables at seventeen, she was set on a path to DJ and build an eclectic collection at the confluence of disco, techno, and house — selections influenced by over fifteen years of large-scale media arts production and relationships with well-known music producers.
She has led the development of hundreds of interactive media projects with cutting-edge technologies, co-founded the experiential media studio Dreamboat, and now runs Newtemporary, a studio for AI consulting and commissioned projects.
She has worked with designers and interdisciplinary research centers including MIT Senseable City Lab, the Institute of Computer Sound and Technology, Stamen Design, and Code for America, and with artists Casey Reas, Robert Hodgin, Aaron Koblin, Camille Utterback, and many more.
Headshots
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Human classified as a Community Organizer, Curator, Entrepreneur, DJ, Queer Mexican Woman programming life at the intersection of art, technology, and cities.