Projects Catalog — Ariciano

Artist

Technologist

Theorist

About

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

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(Info sheet)

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
(2026)

Culture is the Cybernetics of Consciousness | on media and behavioral recursion
(2025)

Paradoxical Intelligence | on structures and origins of knowledge
(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
(2020)

(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 AI and advancing forms of technoculture with a balance 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,
Provocware,
Crumbs,
Archipelagic Technoculture

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

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 AI 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

Guest Lecture at Parson’s 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, CTO of Emerson Collective

(extended list)

Exhibitions
/Performances
/Screening

The Age of Black Metal (Afrotectopia’s Exhibition at Montclair State University, 2025)

Venice Biennale in Architecture (Armenia’s Pavilion, 2025)

The Bronx Museum of Art (Working Knowledge Group Exhibition, 2025)

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

Museum of the Future in Dubai (Future Forum moderator, guest speaker, and exhibited artist, 2024)

Sundance Film Festival | New Frontier (Panelist, 2024)

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