Technologist,
founder &
strategist.

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 technologist, she has led the development of hundreds of interactive media projects with emerging tools — instigating DeepDream, the first exhibition pairing artificial neural networks with artists, which set early frameworks for responsible AI–artist collaboration and helped establish the Artists and Machine Intelligence program at Google; producing Gradient Canvas for Google’s AI headquarters with Google Research and DeepMind; and shipping PromptDJ-MIDI, a real-time generative music prototype featured on the main stage at Google I/O. She co-founded the experiential media studio Dreamboat and now runs Newtemporary, a studio for AI consulting and commissioned projects.

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 an organizer and curator, she partners with cities to address civic issues through public activations like the Urban Prototyping Festival, and 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 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.