Since time immemorial—or at least since the 1990s—Seattle has chased the elusive intersection of art and tech. But what does that mean, actually? What exists at this mythical crossroads—a devil, a pot of gold? For artists, it’s long signified a transformational influx of funding that might reshape the cultural sector. From the tech side, it’s less clear the “intersection” exists at all. Which is part of the problem. Now the landscape is shifting—tectonically—and a pin has dropped on that convergence: xispa. Pronounced CHEE-spa (Catalan for “spark”), xispa is a new experimental art and innovation lab, residency, and exhibition space cofounded by Doug Carmean and Lele Barnett. It opens this summer in the former MadArt studio in South Lake Union. “Landscape shift” may be a tired metaphor, but it’s hard to overstate the moment: AI upheaval, mass workforce reorganization, and waves of tech layoffs are reshaping Seattle’s economic and cultural terrain. xispa is a direct result of that shift—and those layoffs. Carmean is one of roughly 1,000 employees laid off from Meta this year as the company pivots from the metaverse toward AI. Rather than reabsorb elsewhere within the company, he chose to pivot, too. Carmean isn’t just any tech worker. He spent 25 years at Intel and seven at Microsoft. He has around 128 patents in the can or pending (he’s lost track). For the past four years, he served as director of research science at Meta Reality Labs Research, leading a team of 130 scientists in optics, photonics, and light systems. Mad scientist stuff. He was working on ways to integrate artists into the lab when he met Barnett.   “So many people say tech doesn’t support art,” says Barnett, “but I’ve always argued—that’s been my job for 20 years.” An art advisor and curator, Barnett has worked with corporate collections and residencies at Meta, Microsoft, and Starbucks. At Meta she curated for Open Arts, a program that commissioned nearly 1,000 artworks installed in buildings across the globe before it was shuttered in 2022. She had a month left at Meta when she met Carmean at a Calder reception at the Seattle Art Museum. “We were both excited about the same things,” Barnett says. “He wanted artists to inject ideas into technology, and I wanted technology to inform artists’ work. It was the work I always wanted to do, but up to that point, tech companies were like, no, you’re just putting art on the walls.” Soon after, Carmean brought Barnett to Reality Labs to help build the ART (Artists, Researchers, and Technologists) and Expansive Thinking program—a residency embedding artists directly inside scientific research environments. “The idea was to shake researchers out of hyper-focused thinking, to help them think about the future in a bigger way,” Carmean says. “I believe artists can inform technology, and actually change its direction.” Over three years, the program hosted more than 70 artists, including Futurefarmers, Amor Muñoz, Alexander Reben, and Susan Robb. Artists had free rein in labs organized around the senses—optics, audio, haptics. It was Robb who pushed the collaboration furthest. “She was there day after day, working alongside neuroscientists, behavioral AI scientists, mathematicians,” Carmean recalls. “They developed collaborations from her concepts that led to prototypes. Her experiments veered into generative AI. It truly accomplished that crossover.” During the residency, Robb led workshops that inspired speculative concepts like a “Biometric Datacenter” using mushrooms and moss to generate computing power while consuming CO2; a “Cloak of Origins” that collects memories, which can be transmitted to the wearer; and an “Emotion Sampling Device” that allows users to travel to the past to capture emotions and “preserve the emotional texture of human experience across time.” Early prototypes explored these ideas inside the lab. Susan Robb‘s Chance, Prediction, Repetition (cube hunter). Video still from work in progress. If Seattle’s art-tech ecosystem feels fractured, it’s because it is. The paradox can feel maddening: artists and engineers work within blocks (or yards) of each other, but the pathways between them remain tenuous or shrouded. Even inside tech companies, the work is siloed. “We were funding a pretty healthy program,” Barnett says, “and most people in the building didn’t even know it existed.” xispa is designed as a porous space where those boundaries dissolve. Its location inside MadArt—deep in Amazon-ville—is intentional. Carmean first encountered the space in 2014, wandering in off the street to find John Grade’s Middle Fork mid-construction. That’s the model. “We want people who aren’t looking for art to stumble into it,” Barnett says. “If it’s weird enough, people will come inside.” As xispa takes shape, Carmean and Barnett are looking at tech layoffs through rose-tinted headsets: the Big Tech diaspora means more technologists free to pursue innovation not tethered to Big Tech products. They’re currently developing tools like a pocket curator and pocket critic—modeled after a well-known critic, able to generate custom critiques from uploaded images—alongside practical tools for artists and institutions: inventory systems, valuation tools, exhibition management platforms. They are also shepherding art institutions through AI policy development and curatorial frameworks for AI—currently a big messy gray area for many museums.   The physical space opens in June with work developed by Robb during her Meta residency. The inaugural long-term resident is Samantha Wall, winner of the 2024 Betty Bowen Award (and cover artist for last month’s Spring Arts Issue). Her practice is resolutely analog: graphite on paper, ink on clayboard. Which is precisely why they chose her. “We want to see if there’s a way to push a traditional practice,” says Carmean. “There’s 3,500 square feet—fill it. But not just with canvas. Consider technology as an ingredient.” “The aim isn’t just to animate the work,” Barnett adds. “We want to transform the practice.” Wall will be relocating from Portland for her six-month residency supported by xispa. One item on her agenda is developing nanoparticle ink—work she began at Oregon State University through the L.L. Stewart Faculty Fellowship, a program that pairs artists and university staff to realize collaborative research projects. “Drawing with carbon is such an ancient practice, one of the first art forms,” says Wall. “To combine that with such innovative technology is a beautiful marriage.” Beyond ink, she’s exploring new ways to embed storytelling into two-dimensional work. “There’s such an absence in history—the stories that get overlooked or erased. There’s a space where I belong, locating the stories that exist in those gaps, in those negative spaces.” What that looks like in practice, only time—and a few technologists—will tell. 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