Ari Melenciano
Artist DesignerÂ
TechnologistÂ
ResearcherÂ
Theorist
BIOGRAPHY
Ari Melenciano is an artist, designer, and systems thinker whose work engages emerging technologies, public inquiry, and ritual. Through her practice, she explores how computation, designed perception, and new grammars of form can be used to nurture systems for sensing, remembrance, and reimagination.
She has taught courses in new media technologies, design, critical theory, and culture across NYU, the Pratt Institute, Hunter College, Parsons School of Design, and Rutgers University. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai. Â And, she is the founder of Afrotectopia, a pioneering social institution that builds communities at the nexus of culture, art, design, and technology. It has taken the form of festivals, think tanks, a multi-university incubator, an international fellowship, and an experimental art book.Â
Previously, she worked as a creative technologist at Google’s Creative Lab, where she contributed to projects ranging from machine learning on fingertip-scale hardware to creative direction for the Google for Africa campaign, and generative AI research strategy.
Across all mediums, her work is rooted in a poetics of logic, embodied research, and the protection of complexity.