About
Ari Melenciano is a research artist and technoculture theorist investigating forms of intelligence that elude the machine, and cultural behavior as an emergent cybernetic field.
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(Info sheet)
Mediums &
Areas of Inquiry
Computational systems, technoculture, pedagogy, design, cybernetics, phenomenology, Black cultural archives.
Environment, sound, performance, cinema, alternative modes of poetry, perception modulators.
Writing
Pelagñou: An Archipelagic Technoculture
(2026)
Culture is the Cybernetics of Consciousness
(2025)
Paradoxical Intelligence
(2023)
(extended list)
Vocabulary
Terms (Re)defined:
I use these terms to label practices and frameworks I utilize. They have a long-standing history, and I have redefined them by applying them contemporarily, culturally, and technologically:
Computational Anthropology:
A reverse engineering of the machine’s gaze to study, investigate, and reveal human behavior.
Critical Imagination:
Engaging with AI and advancing forms of technoculture with a balance between criticality (ethics, bias, history) and imagination (playful, possibility, creativity).
Embodied Mathematics:
Recognizing bodily movements as patterned gesture that is culturally learned, and becomes subconscious computation. It is particularly witnessed in dance, sport, cadence, and body language.
Created terms:
Incomputable Intelligence (and it’s glossary),
Alloentity,
Provocware,
Pelagñou,
Archipelagic Technoculture, Symphosynthesis
Presentations
Guest Lecture at Futuress (2025) | on unpacking the Critical Imagination method
Curator’s Tour at Montclair State University for The Age of Black Metal exhibition (2025) | on consciousness as a technology
Keynote at University of Oregon’s Art School (2025) | on the philosophies and processes behind art practice
Guest Lecture at MIT Media Lab’s Lunch Lecture Series (2024) | on using AI as a tool for artistic expression and societal inquiry
Panel at Sundance Film Festival (2024) | on counter-logics for AI’s progression.
(extended list)
Interviews/Features
Interview with The Creative Independent (2025) | on staying curious and being intentional
Profile in Impulse Magazine (2025) | On developing Cosmeage
Interview with BacktoListen (2024) | On ancient African civilizations, spirituality, femininity, creativity, pedagogy
(extended list)
Exhibitions
/Performances
/Screening
The Age of Black Metal (Afrotectopia, 2025)
Venice Biennale in Architecture (Armenia’s Pavilion, 2025)
The Bronx Museum of Art (2025)
Museum of Modern Art in NYC (2025)
Museum of the Future in Dubai (2024)
Sundance Film Festival | New Frontier (2024)
The Studio Museum in Harlem (2020)
(extended list)
Awarded by
The Eames Institute’s Curious 100 (2025)
(extended list)
Residencies/Fellowships
Rhizome and Mozilla’s Counterstructural Commons Residency (2026)
Pioneer Works’ Working Artist Fellowship (2025)
University of Maryland’s Inaugural Arts for All Artist-in-Residence (2024)
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Inaugural Future Imagination Fund Fellow (2020)
Eyebeam’s Rapid Response Artist Fellow (2020)
(extended list)
Teaching
Creative Experiments with AI*
(UMD IMD, 2024)
Myth, Rituals, and Sound*
(Hunter IMA, 2023)
Transdisciplinary Design
(Parsons, 2023)
Generative AI and Photography*
(NYU DPI, 2022)
Sounds of a Revolution*
(Hunter IMA, 2021)
Afrotectopian Ecologies*
(NYU ITP, 2021)
Electrotecture*
(NYU ITP, 2020)
Designing Club Culture*
(NYU ITP, 2018-20)
*created and designed the course
(extended list)
InnerCodex
[Exhibitioned]
(2025)
+
Every emotion has a birthplace.
InnerCodex (2025) is a dual installation consisting of Radio Azueli and the Periodic Table of Emotions.
Radio Azueli is an experiential soundscape that sonically simulates being inside a mother’s womb. This work speculates the pre-natal sensorial programming encoded into the nervous system of a baby as it witnesses correlations between a mother, her environment, and her conditions.
The Periodic Table of Emotions is a cartography of feelings. The table places emotions across a variety of spectrums, such as past to present, “positive” to “negative,” and inward to outward. It shows how all emotions are connected, and highlights when a feeling is being experienced in or out of balance. These spectrums reduce the act of pathologizing or judging how we feel, so that we can better navigate toward their causes.
There is a third and invisible aspect to this installation, which is the space between the two pieces. It represents how, as we grow in agency and leave our mother’s womb, everything we surround ourselves with becomes a new womb. Our circumstances and environments influence and shape our perceptions just the same.
Commission and exhibition by Intelligent Mischief
Curation by Mia Imani Harrison