./local_memory: soft systems
ritual, memory, the digital self
a new media arts series
Friday: Opening Reception, 6 PM to 10 PM
Saturday: Open Gallery Hours, 4 PM to 10 PM
Sunday: Open Gallery Hours, 12 PM to 8 PM
All Ages
Exhibition with Interactive Elements
Flashing Lights and LED's in effect
View our FAQ page for more info, or contact us at [email protected] with any accommodation requests.
./local_memory: soft systems is a showcase of recently developed art and tech works by fifteen emerging Bay Area creators that explores how we perceive ourselves in a world inundated by digital systems. Over three nights, this exhibition will include ambitious pieces ranging from immersive, large-scale installations to intimate artifacts, presented across both digital and physical media.
./local_memory is a new, artist-led event series dedicated to surfacing new voices from the Bay Area. Initiated through an open call, this series creates a dedicated space at Gray Area in San Francisco for both emerging and established artists to convey urgent perspectives from the intersection of art and technology.
soft systems is the first exhibition presented by ./local_memory.
In soft systems, the artworks on view are connected by their transformations of digital and material processes into ritual environments for reflection and care. Moving away from optimization and spectacle, the exhibition centers memory, embodiment, and belief as foundational structures of the digital self. Across a range of concerns, many of the artists included are driven by collective experience, communal tradition, interspecies relationships, and slow culture. Together, they mine rich potential from sources of friction, slippage, and stickiness.
On Sunday, April 19, Gray Area is thrilled to host our friends at TIAT for a special exhibition tour! Join us from 6 – 8 PM for special evening gallery hours and a guided walkthrough of the exhibit. All weekend, TIAT members can visit the show for free. RSVP here.
Jeff Hawkins is a Bay Area artist, educator, and curator working across data visualization, generative systems, and physical making. With a background in physics and creative coding, he creates work that reframes familiar technologies, asking viewers to look again at the systems that shape their lives — often extending digital outputs into physical form through diverse fabrication methods. He holds a PhD in physics with a focus on education research and currently teaches at Gray Area, where he has also studied art and technology. His work has been shown at TIAT, Art Hack Day, and Fidget Camp Showcase, and he has collaborated with Stamen Design, Leonardo/ISAST, and SPF420. ./local_memory is his ongoing effort to build a more connected and accessible Bay Area art+tech community.
Irish Tee-Sy is an experience designer and internet artist based in San Francisco. She defines technology as an extension of human creativity and explores it as a medium for poetry and self-expression. She is inspired by early net days on the family computer and the possibility of soft digitalism in a post-internet era. Her art weaves narratives of identity, girlhood, and temporality into poetic interfaces that reconstruct stories as agential, intimate browser experiences. She enjoys playing with the boundaries of what’s possible within digital spaces.
Chris Giang (exteeng) is a multimedia sensory artist and data scientist based in Oakland, CA. Her practice incorporates tea, flowers, incense, and handmade ceramics, expanding into soundscape work that centers audio narrative. Working through sound, she explores the tenderness embedded in the terrain of the ordinary, infusing it with experimentation and deconstruction.
Immersive environments unfold through her work, aligning auditory, tactile, and visual elements to invite presence and reflection. She is currently integrating touch and audio reactive systems, with both visual and sound components to combine previously distinct strands of her practice. Through iteration, spatial design, and interdisciplinary collaboration, she reexamines these elements across different lenses, reshaping how sensory language is experienced and understood.
