At Third Place Technologies our mission is to support the interdisciplinary community in the PNW at the intersection of arts and technology through collaborative spaces, exhibition opportunities, networking events, and life-long learning opportunities.
In partnership with our sibling art group Totally Legit LLC and with the support of 4Culture and the Town of Skykomish, we have now hosted more than a decade of Electric Sky events in the Skykomish Ballpark (in the Cascade mountains, 16 miles from Stevens Pass). Drawing from the tech-sector, Electric Sky is structured much like a hackathon, serving as an immersive creative retreat for artists, technologists and friends across the PNW region to learn in workshops, collaborate in a pop-up lab, and share their work in an outdoor, evening artwalk in the Ballpark. We have found this event to be a wonderful vehicle for interdisciplinary collaboration, learning, and the development of new work. In designing Electric Sky, we really thought carefully about how to foster not only individual creatives but also the PNW arts and tech community as a whole.
Pop-up lab in the Skykomish Ballpark
We found that the creative retreat format is a great recipe for fostering arts/tech innovation: including peer knowledge-sharing workshops; dedicated time for project sprints in a lab with shared resources; access to serendipitous, cross-disciplinary conversation and collaboration; opportunities to play and socialize over several days through shared meals, sitting at the fire, or playing in the river; and a exhibiting in a showcase art walk. We are proud that numerous projects incubated at Electric Sky have been brought to other art festivals and exhibitions throughout the Northwest over the past decade.
That said, a weekend retreat in the mountains can be challenging to attend, and for years we have planned to host a similar event in Seattle when the opportunity presented itself. It is not easy to find a space that allows for a pop-up lab, showcase exhibition, and social events over four days in Seattle (at a low cost). We have hosted related events, including the Seattle: City of the Future immersive art exhibition in 2023, and the PNW Arts and Tech Symposium in 2025, but these were focused more on knowledge-sharing and arts exhibition than interdisciplinary collaboration.
Now, we are very excited to say we will be hosting the Seattle version of Electric Sky, Electric SEA, by taking over the halls of PublicDisplay.Art and the ArtLove Salon in downtown Seattle! As an arts-oriented hackathon – think creative retreat in the city – we are planning for about 150 arts and tech participants during the hackathon Friday and Saturday, and another 100 guests at the showcase exhibition and celebratory party Saturday evening.
If you are an artist, technologist, designer, maker, hacker who seeks interdisciplinary connection, life-long learning, a chance to find hybrid minds like yours, opportunities to share what you can do – or if you just enjoy immersing yourself in collaborative creative sprints – well, this is the event for you. Through the support of PublicDisplay.Art, the Conru Foundation*, 4Culture, and ArtsFund, and the generous contributions in time from our generous event organizers and volunteers, we will be able to host this event for free.
We are very excited by the opportunity to partner with PublicDisplay.Art, another nonprofit dedicated to fostering a thriving creative community in the NW, in part through arts exhibition opportunities in their quarterly magazine. We have partnered with them in the past when organizing Seattle: City of the Future in 2023. Many of us have also worked with their Executive Director Marty Griswold as Totally Legit artists with installations at Bumbershoot and the Covid House of Horrors (via OneReel). We share a love for arts and community development, with a focus on their civic, public benefit. At Electric SEA, PublicDisplay.Art is generously allowing us to use their space for our pop-up lab, and one floor up in the same building we will be able to use the ArtLove Salon for breakout groups, the showcase exhibition, and wrap-up party.
* We have heard some concern about the association with the Conru Foundation, see our post with more about the ArtLove Salon and the Conru Foundation here.