Ari Melenciano

Artist
Designer
Technologist
Researcher
Theorist

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Selected Works, Interviews, Essays, Talks:

Bibliography

Tao te Ching (various translations)

Books I’ve read, still reading, generally referencing:

Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS
The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger
The Red Book by Carl Jung
The Limit of the Useful by Georges Bataille
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
Sensitive by Jenn Granneman and Andre Solo
Designs for the Pluriverse by Pablo Escobar
Pluriversal Politics by Pablo Escobar
Great Thinkers by School of Life
The Form of Becoming by Janina Wellmann
Anti-Education by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Socilogical Imagination by Mills
Cultural Epochs in Human History by A. Maurice
The Secret of Words by Chomsky and Moro
The Republic of Plato
The Affecting Presence by Armstrong
Eastern Body, Western Mind by Jusith
Mastery by Robert Greene
Emotional Contagion by Elaine Hatfield+
Creative Evolution by Bergson
The Phenomenon of Life by Hans Jonas
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Cognitive Architecture: From Biopolitics to Noopolitics by DSD
The Senses of Man by Wilentz
Quantum Body by Deepak Chopra
Patterns in Prehistory by Wenke
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Become What You Are by Alan Watts
Aldous Huxley and the Way to Reality by Charles Holmes
Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Polishing the Mirror by Ram Dass
Psychological Types by Carl Jung
Objectivity in Social Research by Gunnar Myrdal
Anthology as Cosmology
The School of Life: An Emotional Education by The School of Life
Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
The Book Of Tea by Okakura, Kakuzō
Freedom Dreams by Robin D. G. Kelley
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton
Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania: Analysis of Social Experiment by Michaela Von Freyhold
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism
Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan Africanism
Pattern Thinking by Buckminster Fuller
Politics of Design by Victor Papanek
African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design by Ron Eglash
I Can’t Dance to it if it’s Not My Revolution by Natalie Musteata
Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard
Night Fever: Designing Club Culture: 1960-Today by Vitra Design Museum
Folding the Red into the Black by Walter Mosley
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere
Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
all about love by bell hooks
The Black Mixtape 1967-1975 by Goran Hugo Olsson
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music by Beckwith and Roelstraete
Wabi Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
Black Prison Movements,USA by NOBO
Speculative Everything by Dunne and Raby
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
The Disco Files 1973-1978 by Vince Alletti
Basquiat’s Defacement by Labouvier
Cult-Ure by Rian Hughes
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
Blues People by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
Brian Eno Visual Music by Christopher Scoates
Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
The Sound Studies Reader by Jonathan Sterne
Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia by Andrew Blauvelt
From Warfare to Welfare by Jennifer S. Light
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller
Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life by Nato Thompson
Design as Learning: A School of Schools Reader
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures) by Haraway, Donna J
Pedagogy of the Heart (Bloomsbury Revelations) by Freire, Paulo
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil
Francis Kéré: Radically Simple by Lepik, Andres
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine
Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang
Black Dada by Adam Pendleton

[continued]

The Essence of Tao by Pamela Ball
City Squares: Eighteen Writer and the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
Great Thinkers by The School of Life
The Heart of Buddhist Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression by Suzanne Preston Blier
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change by Victor Papanek
Critique of Black Reason by Achille Mbembe
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
Race and Modern Architecture Edited by Mabel Wilson
The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth for America’s Poor by Michael D. Tanner
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation by don Jose Ruiz
Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life by don Jose Ruiz
Neri Oxman: Material Ecology by Antonelli, Paola
Bubbletecture: Inflatable Architecture and Design by Francis, Sharon

Moving Against the System by The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness
Yurugu: An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Ani
Freedom and Socialism / Uhuru Na Ujamaa: A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965-1967 by Julius K. Nyerere
Design for Ecological Democracy (The MIT Press) by Jr., Randolph T. Hester
Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy by Kathleen Cleaver
Seeking the Beloved Community: A Feminist Race Reader (SUNY series, Philosophy and Race) by James, Joy
Raise Race Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965 by Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance (Black Critique) by Robinson, Cedric J.
Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis by McKittrick, Katherine
Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (New Edition) by Banks M William
Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital by John Restakis
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–87 by Thomas Sankara
In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon, Frantz
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

A Power Stronger Than Itself by George E. Lewis
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin

Other books on the bookshelf:

Aesthetics of Equity by Craig L. Wilkins
Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Intelligent Life by Blank Forms
We Are Open Circuits by Nam June Paik
The Source of Self Regard by Toni Morrison
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society by Norbert Wiener
Captivating Technology by Ruha Benjamin
Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Whole Earth Catalog Field Guide by Caroline Maniaque-Benton
The Senses: Design Beyond Vision by Lupton and Lipps
Future Sounds: The Story of Electronic Music from Stockhausen to Skrillex by David Stubbs
Architecture in the Age of Radio of Buckminster Fuller Inc. by Mark Wigley
As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution by Val Wilmer
Funk by Rickey Vincent
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Russell, Legacy
Behemoth: The History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman
Criticizing Photographs by Terry Barrett
The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things by George Kubler
Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art & Philosophy by Robert Farris Thompson
The Making of a Counter Culture by Theordore Roszak
CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
When Affirmative Action was White by Ira Katznelson
Forces in Motion: and the Meta-reality of Creative Music by Anthony Braxton
Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound by Tara Rodgers
Mad Skill: Midi and Music Technology in the 20th Century
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit by Sherry Turkle
The Economist Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas by Robert Frank
Forensics of Capital by Michael Ralph
Psychadelia: and Other Colors by Rob Chapman
Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties by Mike Marqusee
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James
How Music Works by David Byrne
Essays in Existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre
Language, Rhythm and Sound by Joseph Adjaye
The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson
Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for Deep Democracy by J. Phillip Thompson
Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas by Leonard A. Cole
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss
Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson
Things to Do and Make in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellog
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can be Done About it by Paul Collier
Poetics of Space by Gatson Bachelard
Misfit Economy by Alexa Clay

Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project by Robert Moses
The Well Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life by Jonathan Rose
The Upside to Inequality by Edward Conard
Against Everything (Essays) by Mark Greif

Ari Melenciano