About
In 2025 Third Place Technologies partnered with Future Arts, with the support of Cornish College of the Arts and Artist Trust, to organize a one-day symposium for the Pacific Northwest arts and technology community bringing together practitioners, educators, and community organizers working at the intersections of art, technology, and design.
Now, in 2026 we are significantly expanding this autumn’s footprint by partnering with producer John Boylan to integrate 9e26: Ten Years Later, the historic commemoration of 2016’s 9 Evenings 2 (9e2). The resulting two-location event creates a physical and conceptual bridge between two exceptional venues, located just a 10-minute walk, or streetcar ride, apart.
Background
In 2014, a group of practitioners, educators, and media at the intersection of art, technology, and design hosted a workshop at Cornish, bringing together key stakeholders in the region to discuss how to foster emerging genres of interdisciplinary, technology-mediated art in the Pacific Northwest. They produced a white paper and later a publication in ISEA [1] defining this communities’ special characteristics, articulating and prioritizing the community’s common goals, and proposing a series of activities as next steps toward fostering this community, leading to numerous initiatives in the region. See white paper here.
However, over ten years later, while there is still a high density of technology creatives in the Pacific Northwest – artists, developers, technologists, designers, entrepreneurs – there is a general sense this community is fractured and underserved, in part due to the devastating effect on arts, tech, and community infrastructure brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are hosting the PWW Arts and Tech Symposium to help reconnect former and emerging stakeholders in the arts and tech space, share knowledge about what inspires us, articulate our current goals and priorities as a community of practice in the Pacific Northwest, and identify concrete activities for improved community cohesion and resources.
Event Goals
- Increased arts and tech community connection and cohesion
- Creative inspiration through exposure to recent work and emerging technologies
- Improved awareness of and access to arts and tech community resources
- Life-long learning through peer knowledge-sharing
- Mapping the people, places, and events in the arts and tech community in the PNW and on the international stateion sharing through online tools
2026 Organizing Committee
- Shelly Farnham (Artist, Community Catalyst/Researcher, President, Third Place Technologies),
- Genevieve Tremblay (Artist, Community Catalyst/Researcher, Third Place Technologies),
- Jeff Brice (Artist/Researcher, Educator, Cornish College of the Arts),
- Joseph Gray (Artist, Creative Technologist)
- Jacob Fennell (Artist, Creative Technologist)
- John Boylan (Producer, 9e26)
Organizing Partners
Third Place Technologies is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, community, and life-long learning for artists, creative technologists, and civic activists. We provide spaces, events, and new technologies for the creative community at the intersection of art, technology, and civic engagement to create, collaborate, learn, and share their work.
9e26 builds on the 9E2 Seattle event in 2016, a series of performances and installations inspired by the original “9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering” from 1966, which took place at King Street Station and other venues in Seattle. Learn more and see short video.
Supporting Partners
We thank Cornish for generously allowing us to host the event in their 9th Avenue Gallery and providing other event infrastructure.
xispa is an art innovation lab, residency, and exhibition space where artists and technologists experiment with ideas that don’t fit traditional museums or galleries. We thank xispa for providing a venue for our 9e2 conversations.
Other Supporting Organizations
Our ongoing activities at Third Place Technologies including the PNW Arts and Tech Symposium are made possible in part through grants and other forms of sponsorship from supporting organizations, including:
[1] Farnham, S., Brice, J., Tremblay, G., Christie, C., and da Silva, A. (2015). Fostering a community of innovation at the intersection of art and technology in the Pacific Northwest. In Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art.