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Photograph by Dom Ming Photograph by Dom Ming


Ari Melenciano has cultivated an expansive practice within the arts, technology, design, culture, and pedagogy. Her natural ability to combine many disciplines reveals their interconnectedness and reimagines their conventions for new possibilities. Her art practice ranges from using improvisational dance as an ethnomusicological research instrument, to exploring AI through both critical and imaginative lenses, to sonic composition using botanical data. Her work has been exhibited around the world from Dubai's Museum of the Future to the Studio Museum in Harlem. She's a frequent international public speaker, and occasionally designs and teaches courses at New York University, Hunter College, Parsons, and the Pratt Institute.

She's the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution that imagines new possibilities at the nexus of art, design, technology, and culture. Afrotectopia has taken many forms including festivals, think tanks, summer camp, adult continued education programming, international residency, and incubators. Currently, Afrotectopia is on a book tour to promote their recently published kitchen table art book titled, Black Metal, which came out of an incubator between Afrotectopia, MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative, and NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. And previously, she was a creative technologist at Google's Creative Lab. Some work she did while at Google included creating technologies using machine learning on hardware devices the size of a finger, contributing creative direction for the Google for Africa campaign, and creative strategy for generative AI development.







CV, here. 

Ari Melenciano

Artist • Technologist • Researcher • Theorist

About
Email


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Practice

[Studio Art,  Writing,  3D Design,  Performance,  Sound, AI/ML,  Photography,  Research,  Interactive Code,  Physical Computing]



Series of Experiments in Dance and Sound

(3D animations, remixes, sound studies | 2024)

Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble

(Solo art exhibition + essay | 2024)
   
     

  •Diagrams of Otzkö Kazo’s ---  Philosophies


        •Htzioro’s Paintings | Htziara’s Paint


        •Technotzkölogies


        •Supratemporal Sueños of Azueli


        •Oratori’s Symbols of Language


        •Anza’s Cosmogram

 

        •Soloro and Seira’s Symphosynthesis


        •Toiszo’s Time Dimensions


        •Gjzitiua’s Sonic Sculptures

 

        •Spherical Theater of the Subconscious Plasticity


        •Axzistoc’s Documentation: Process as Art

   

Sculpting Consciousness: Art as a Materialization of Research — and Vice Versa

(Essay | 2023)

AI Self Portraits, Series

(AI Photo Series | 2023)

Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis 

(Essay | 2023)

Paradoxical Intelligence

(Essay | 2023)

Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo

(Performance at UMD | 2023)

Computational Anthropology

(AI Image Series | 2021)

Hues of Stzair Echology | 001

(Modular Synthesis Soundscape | 2021)

Finger User Interface (FUI)

(Interactive Code, Hardware Machine Learning | 2021)

Celestial Florilegia 

(3D Rendering, Speculative Botany | 2021)

Strawberry Sounds

(Biosonification | 2021)

Revel in the Minutae

(Video Art, Soundscape, Poetry | 2021)

Studio Museum’s Artists on Artists: Live Modular Synth Set

(Modular Synthesis | 2021)

Traveling the Interstitium

(WebVR | 2021)

National Endowment for the Arts: Building Afrocentric Technoculture and Community 

(Essay | 2021)

Electrocology of Sound Travel 

(WebVR | 2020)

Metamorphosis.FM 

(WebVR | 2020)

Notes on Omni-Specialized Design for Beautiful Futures 

(Essay | 2020)

Electro Negro Synesthesyo 

(Sound Sculptures | 2019)

Radical Technoculture for Racial Equity 

(Essay | 2019)

Ojo Oro

(Physical Computing, Product Design | 2018)

Building a Museum 353 Years in the Future 

(Essay | 2018)



Experiments + Research


Experimental Architectural Drafting (2020)




Recorded Talks


“Let’s Rebrand AI” at Sundance

(Panel | 2024)


Women of Color in Engineering Collaborative

(Fireside Chat | 2024)

Sculpting Consciousness: Mythopoesis, AI, and the Symphony of Cultural Metacognition at WhatIf Summit
(Keynote | 2023)

MIT Media Lab‘s Lunch Lecture Series:
Generative AI and Artistic Practice

(Keynote | 2023)


Parsons School of Design’s Cloud Salon: Sculpting Consciousness

(Keynote | 2023)

Dubai Future Forum: Towards Other Futures

(Moderator | 2023)

Iterations.Online: Sentient Code

(Keynote | 2023)

AI & Art: Reflections on Language, Myths and Culture with Ari Melenciano at Montclair State Universities Galleries

(Discussion | 2023)

TheHost.Is: Afrotectopia Book and Computational Anthropology

(Keynote | 2022)


Carnegie Mellon University’s The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry’s Art && Code: Homemade | Electromedia, Design, Culture
(Keynote | 2021)


California College of the Arts - CCA: Speculating Futures Through Omni-Specialized Design

(Keynote | 2021)


MIT Open Documentary Lab: Design Fluidity and Black Radical Imagination
(Keynote | 2021)

ArtCenter College of Design: Critical Discourse in Design
(Panelist | 2021)

School of Visual Arts’ Products of Design Lecture Series
(Keynote | 2020)

Harvard’s Black in Design Conference: Black Power Meets the Digital: Equity & Justice in Technology and Media

(Panel | 2019)



Interviews/Features/Podcasts



Studio Visit Vlog with Dev Moore

(2024)

Back to Listen: Forces of Thought

(2024)

Caimpaign US: Black Artists to Watch

(2024)

University of Maryland’s Inaugural Arts for All Residents

(2024)

Oroko Radio’s Long Distance
With Dre Ngozi

(2023)

Wired: How to Spot AI-Generated Art, According to Artists

(2023)

Sundance Film Festival: AI

(2023)

Technically Optimistic: On Strike! How will AI impact the economy, culture, and the future of creativity?

(2023)

Forbes: Dispatch From A Black Future: An Interview With Ari Melenciano

(2021)

Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change

(2021)

Gabriela Hirst x Pioneer Works

(2021)

WIX: The sight and sound of Ari Melenciano

(2020)

New York Magazine’s Curbed Feature

(2020)

DesignObserver

(2020)




[Blog | Archive]


(Photographs, travels, process, etc.)





Mark