Projects Catalog — Ariciano

Artist

Technologist

Theorist

About

Ari Melenciano is a research artist who studies and designs conditions through which culture, perception, and intelligence take shape.

Working across linguistic, computational, sensory, spatial, and social forms, she builds conceptual instruments that make difficult-to-perceive relations available for observation, experience, and intervention, with particular attention to how humans and computational systems affect one another.

Email ↗

(Extended CV)

Mediums &
Areas of Inquiry

Computational systems, technoculture, pedagogy, design, cybernetics, phenomenology, Black cultural archives, perception modulators.

Writing

Pelagñou: An Archipelagic Technoculture | on plurality and distributed knowledge
Presented through Rhizome and Mozilla Foundation
(2026)

Culture is the Cybernetics of Consciousness | on media and behavioral recursion
Originally presented as a keynote to Instrument
(2025)

Paradoxical Intelligence | on structures and origins of knowledge
Commissioned by the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics
(2023)

Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis
(2022)

Notes on Omni-Specialized Design for Beautiful Futures | on alternative intelligences and structures quietly determining behavior
Presented through the Guild of Future Architects
(2020)

Radical Technoculture for Racial Equity | on the internet and computation as political apparatuses
Presented at NYU’s Black Portraitures V
(2019)

(extended list)

Vocabulary

Terms (Re)defined:
I use these terms to label practices and frameworks I utilize. These term names have a longer-standing history, and I have substantially redefined their applicability by considering 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 advancing forms of technoculture through a recursive dynamic between criticality (ethics, bias, societal-implication) 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:

As concepts:
Incomputable Intelligence,
Pneumareal,
Créolucence,
Alloentity,
Archipelagic Technoculture

As titles of Work:
Cosmeage,
InnerCodex,
Pelagñou,
Symphosynthesis

Exhibition
/Performance
/Screening

Afrotectopia’s The Age of Black Metal at Montclair State University Galleries
(Curator, Exhibiting Artist, Spatial Designer | 2025)

Armenia’s Pavilion at the

Venice Biennale in Architecture

(Contributed research and conceptual design | 2025)

Working Knowledge exhibition at The Bronx Museum of Art (Exhibiting artist | 2025)

Museum of Modern Art in NYC (Film screening debut with the Creativity Lab | 2025)

The Studio Museum in Harlem (Performance Artist - exhibition activation | 2020)

(extended list)

Presentations

Panelist at The New School’s F(r)ictions symposium on AI (2026) (video) | on opacity, Incomputable Intelligence, Critical Imagination

Panelist at New York Public Library’s Conversation Series about AI
(2026)

Guest Lecture at Futuress (2025) | on engaging with advancing technoculture through Critical Imagination

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

Future Forum at the Museum of the Future in Dubai (Panel moderator, guest speaker, and exhibiting artist | 2024)

Sundance Film Festival | New Frontier (Panelist | 2024)

Guest Lecture at Parsons School of Design’s Cloud Salon (2023) | On subconscious intellect, computational anthropology, and mythopoesis

(extended list)

Interviews/Features

Feature in Rhizome and Mozilla Foundation’s Counterstructural Commons Residency Report (2026)

Interview with The Creative Independent (2025) | on staying curious and being intentional

Profile in Impulse Magazine (2025) | On developing Cosmeage

Interview (2024) | On ancient African civilizations, spirituality, femininity, creativity, pedagogy

Interview (2023) | On AI, creativity, society, and perception with Raffi Krikorian, then CTO of Emerson Collective - current CTO of Mozilla

(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)