Flowers

public outputs | final form

This section includes recorded talks, podcasts, essays, and other finished publicly released work.

October 2023

Sculpting Consciousness: Mythopoesis, AI, and the Symphony of Cultural Metacognition

Ari Melenciano presenting at "Sculpting Consciousness Mythopoesis, AI, and the Symphony of Cultural Metacognition" 2023 What IF Summit

Ari Melenciano’s art and research practice has existed at a pivotal nexus between collective consciousness and subconsciousness – studied through the harmonious interplay of mythopoesis, AI exploration, and cultural metacognition. In this talk, Ari unveils the threads that weave our collective narratives, transcending epochs and traditions. At the heart of her exploration lies an intricate dance between the avant-garde and the ancestral, molding new pathways of artistic synthesis. This session also delves into mythic realms and psychoanalytic inquiries, entwined with spiritual echoes from diasporas, fostering a deepened understanding of self and society.

AI & Art: Reflections on Language, Myths and Culture with Ari Melenciano

This event features a discussion with Ari Melenciano, an exhibiting artist in the Montclair State University Galleries' fall exhibition The Backend, who's using AI both artistically and as a tool for societal inquiry. Ari's current art and research practice is deeply invested in studying consciousness, both as a mythopoetic technique for unveiling the collective unconscious in her studio practice and through a computational anthropological approach with AI to understand the collective conscious. Through her interrogation of notions of truth and objectivity, her work reveals the influence of myths that humanity is rooted within, as well as how the power dynamics of language are being automated through AI. The artist will engage in a conversation with Montclair faculty, including Charlotte Kent, Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Julian Brash, Associate Professor of Anthropology.

Presented with Research on Interdisciplinary Global Studies (RIGS) and supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Departments for Anthropology, Art & Design, Justice Studies, Religion and Sociology.

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

Phase One findings of the Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier in designing a metacognitive art practice through pluralistic intelligences.

Cloud Salon at Parson’s Design and Technology Program

A lecture on designing an artistic and research practice through psychoanalysis and mythopoesis. This talk is attempting to open-source the process. This talk also briefly explores bio-sonification, power of language/ metadata of LLMs, cultural metacognition, and generative AI.

Montclair State Gallery’s The Backend Exhibition
Montclair State University, NJ

Ari Melenciano’s CA001: Synthesized Identity and CA002: Synthesized Archive delve into contemporary Western world AI imaging technologies to better understand their capabilities and limitations. Their image outputs are a mirror to society's understanding of themselves and the societies around them, revealing image outputs that range in accuracy. Melenciano uses both self-portraiture and archival materials as the foundation for her works and inputs a series of text-based prompts into an AI imaging machine to influence how her appearance and historical images are rendered and transformed, revealing the tool’s understanding of social, cultural, and political nuance or lack thereof.

September 2023

Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo at University of Maryland’s NextNow Fest
College Park, MD
Photos by David Andrews and Josh Nathan Jr.

Biosonification Performance at Ford Foundation Gallery’s “What Models Make Worlds: Critical Imaginaries of AI” Exhibition
NY, NY

July 2023

Technically Optimistic podcast conversation with Raffi Krikorian of the Emerson Collective

Listen, here.

Long Distance podcast conversation with DJ Dre Ngozi
#Afrofunk #Afrojazz

“We dive into the art of biosonification, module synthesizers, AI and identity exploration, artistic experimentation and the vibrant world of African diasporic music. She also blessed us with a 🔥 30-mins mix of afrofunk, Afro Jazz and more.” Listen, here.

June 2023

Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo at Andrew Herzog’s WHAT NOW exhibition
Brooklyn, NY

May 2023

Paradoxical Intelligence (essay)

I wrote an essay on the paradoxes of contemporary Western concepts of intelligence, while unpacking notions of "truth" and "correction" that have existed within society and are being perpetuated through AI.

Commissioned by The New School's Vera List Center. Read, here.

Exploring Our Identities Through AI Synthesis workshop at WIX
NY, NY

March 2023

MIT Media Lab’s Lunch Lecture series organized by the Future Sketches group

SXSW on the panel Designing Equity Through an Afrofuturist Lens (audio recording, here)

(I don’t label myself an Afrofuturist but do appreciate it’s practice and impact)

Code/Art Fest 2023 - Women in Art & Tech Panel

Code/Art Fest 2023 - Closing Keynote with Ari Melenciano

Cosmos Experience: Towards New Sensemaking - AI, Art, Creativity & Aesthetics at Mozilla Foundation’s MozFest 2023

“Given the ways AI is reshaping our understanding of the world, eachOther, ourselves, ie notions of truth or reality more fundamentally, thinking these technologies with and through art, aesthetic, and creative practice becomes essential. As art, anchored in the experiential, the sensuous, the tactile and visceral, introduces different notions of truth and sensemaking.

Art begets us to not only envision the world differently but also allows for nuanced and novel modes of engagement, questioning, and experiencing.

How does thinking AI and art together re/orient us towards communal, embodied, or concerted presence, performance, or relationships with technologies?

How does Art, aesthetics, and other creative forms of sensemaking evoke different possibilities for engaging and inhabiting our socio-technical or AI entanglements?

Invited artist, Ari Melenciano, will present her art and research practice that explores computational anthropology, societal subconscious intellect, the ethnographical morphing of artistic expression across diasporas, speculative design, the formation and embodiment of mythology and rituals, and the materialization of omni-scoped research in the form of quasi-pseudosciences.

This session is a Speculative Salon-styled discussion format where Ari Melenciano will share their work and perspectives while responding to participants' comments and curiosities and will close with a moment of reflection and collective contemplation around what might AI might mean for art and creativity.” Full video not available but here’s the recap video:

Jan 2023 Public Talk with TheHost.is, HyphenLabs, and Ari Melenciano

2022 Establishment of Otkzö Kazo — Ritual for Art Making, A Way of Artistry — Otzkö Kazo embodies a few forms, with the intention of refocusing the process, vs the end product, in art practice. It also designs rituals through geomancy and divination, as a guide to art-making. Currently OK’s public form is as an Instagram displaying process but tangible artifacts are coming soon.