Afterparty & Gray Area Art Exhibition

Let's end the Decentralized Web Summit with a blast at the Afterparty and Gray Area Festival Art Exhibition located at the historic Grand Theater at 2665 Mission Street, San Francisco. Join us in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District on Thursday, August 2nd from 6:00–9:00pm for cocktails, food, music and the largest collection of blockchain based artworks ever assembled on the West Coast. Plus, we'll unveil the winners of the Treasure Hunt in the Crypt!

If you arrive in San Francisco the weekend before the Decentralized Web Summit, you'll make it in time for the Gray Area Festival from July 26–29. This year features special spotlight on Blockchain and Distributed Systems, presenting the largest collection of blockchain based artworks ever assembled on the West Coast.

10 years ago, Gray Area started the conversation in San Francisco around how the integration of art and technology practice could create a wiser, more creative, inclusive, and forward-looking approach to innovation and social responsibility. The Gray Area Festival is our flagship event advancing this dialog around the most consequential topics in technology today, using artistic inquiry to help understand their implications. Our exhibiting artists and speakers will address diverse topics such as understanding the role of women in the development of the internet, government surveillance, 3d scanning and the body, cultural heritage preservation, technology production in Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta, Afrofuturist strategies to technology development, new forms of distributed governance, new economic models for artists, and a broad spotlight on some of the most trending technologies: distributed ledgers and blockchains. This program confronts some of the greatest tensions in our society today and gestures toward ways to move beyond them.

Now in its fourth edition, the Gray Area Festival is a unique global event focused on advancing open culture and the common good through holistic innovation and aesthetic practice. Our programming presents a survey of culture through the lens of art and technology, offering a deeper understanding of the present moment along with visions of the trails and opportunities ahead. Held at our Grand Theater in San Francisco's Mission district, the Festival highlights Gray Area's continued pursuit of integrated art and technology applied toward civic, educational, entrepreneurial, aesthetic, and social practice.