Josette Melchor // Newtemporary: Designing in the Space Between New and Next

Join us Tuesday, September 15th at 5:30 PM for a talk with Josette Melchor, founder and cultural strategist working across art, technology, cities, and responsible AI. As the founder of Gray Area and now Newtemporary — and a board member of the Burning Man Project — Josette has spent her career shaping experiences that connect emerging technologies with civic life, cultural infrastructure, and public imagination. Her work moves fluidly across spatial strategy, immersive media, curation, and systems thinking, always with an eye toward how culture and technology evolve together. In this talk, Josette will explore the idea behind Newtemporary, the notion that everything from culture to place to technology is always in transition. She will share how this perspective informs her work with cities, developers, and cultural organizations, from designing immersive experiences and public spaces to prototyping ethical and creative uses of AI. Drawing on projects that have ranged from large-scale festivals and artist exhibitions to global placemaking programs for Google, she will reflect on how design can respond to impermanence, support community meaning-making, and help shape the cultural infrastructure of the future. This event is free and open to the public. .................... Design Field Notes is a lecture series where we invite the public to the UC Berkeley campus for conversations with designers, makers and artists who are contributing to shaping the future through design. If you require accommodation for a disability for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Jacobs Institute staff at [contact removed] with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.