Ari  Jazmín  Melenciano






[Selected Works]
2025
The Age of Black Metal
InnerCodex
Birds of Unfeathered
Cybernetics of Consciousness
Cosmeage
Armenia Pavilion - Venice Biennale
Symphosynthesis
Critical Imagination







2024
 
Black Metal Starship Program
Keynotes - Art/Research
Sundance: New Frontier
Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble


         





2023
 

Forces of Thought: Interview
Paradoxical Intelligence
Sentient Code
Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo
Celestial Florilegia



 







2022


Computational Anthropology
Synthesized Portraiture
To Sift
Finger User Interface (FUI)
Traveling the Interstitium with Octavia Butler




   

               



2021


Bailaura










    
2020


Electrocology of Sound Travel
u¨Tu
Metamorphosis.FM







BIO




Ari J. Melenciano is an artist and cultural researcher working with perception, time, consciousness, and cybernetics as materials.


She has taught courses in new media technologies, design, critical theory, and culture at institutions including New York University, Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and Parsons School of Design. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai.


Melenciano is the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution dedicated to cultivating and Black imagination and culture while at the intersection of art, design, and technology. Afrotectopia has taken the form of festivals, think tanks, an international fellowship, a multi-university incubator, and a speculative design publishing platform.


Previously, she worked as a creative technologist at Google’s Creative Lab, contributing to projects spanning machine learning on fingertip-scale hardware, creative direction for the Google for Africa campaign, and generative AI research, strategy, and development.


Approach
Her work examines how feedback, memory, and relation attune lived experience, and how these internal processes then shape culture. She uses imagination as a method to excavate interiority, expand the performance of culture, and recover what the archive has forgotten.


Mediums &
Methods of inquiry
Sound, performance, cinema, and computational systems; informed by cybernetics, phenomenology, and Black cultural archives; attentive to perception and lived experience.
WritingCulture is the Cybernetics of Consciousness


Paradoxical Intelligence


Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis

Terms Created:



























Symphosynthesis (n.): A ritualized practice that bridges human and nonhuman perception through sound. It translates biological signals into sonic forms as a way of attuning to alternative modes of intelligence.


Meta-Interiority (n.): The practice of observing one’s internal experience with awareness of the act of observation itself. A recursive mode of perception in which reflection and experience co-generate meaning.


Meta-Cybernetics (n.): how inner awareness scales outward into culture, technology, and systems, through relational networks.



Terms Redefined:Computational Anthropology: An inquiry into how computational systems model, interpret, and shape human identity and culture. It reverses the machine’s gaze to reveal the feedback loops between data, behavior, and social imagination.
Exhibited atMontclair State Gallery (2025), Intelligent Mischief’s Futures of Repair (2025), Black Beyond’s Warpmode at Pioneer Works (2025), Kinfolk + Brooklyn Bridge Park (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), Montclair State Gallery (2023), The Museum of Moving Image (2022), Sundance Film Festival | New Frontier (2021), and The Studio Museum in Harlem (2020), New York University (2018), University of Maryland (2014)


Awarded by
The Eames Institute’s Curious 100 (2025), USA Artists Fellowship Nomination (3x - 2021-2024), New York University’s President's Service Award (2018), Urvashi Vaid / Melinda Paras Inclusive Programming Award (2018), Tisch School of the Arts Dean Fellowship (2017 - 2018), and (unexpectedly) the Bollywood Film Festival for Best Cell Phone Cinema Short (2018), 


Teaching
From 2018-2025, Ari has taught 26 predominately graduate-level university courses at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), Department of Photography (DPI), and the Interactive Media Arts (IMA) Low Res Program | Pratt Institute‘s Communication Design Program | Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts (IMA) Program | The New School’s/ Parson’s School of Design Transdisciplinary Design Program | University of Maryland’s Studio Art and Immersive Media Design (IMD) Program | and Rutgers University’s School of Design


Courses she has designed and taught include: Designing Club Culture (NYU), Electrotecture (NYU), Afrotectopian Ecologies (NYU), Sounds of a Revolution (Hunter), Myth, Rituals, and Sound (Hunter), Creative Experiments with AI (UMD) 

Keynote/
panelistSXSW, MozFest, Google Design’s SPAN, Harvard, MIT Media Lab, SVA, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Oregon, Fordham,  ArtCenter, California College of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, DePaul University, the Pratt Institute, Univ. of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, University of Tennessee, Georgia State, Geneva School of Design, Pacific Northwest University, Whitman College, SUNY Fredonia, Queens College, Wesleyan University, University of Denver, Today at Apple (5th Avenue, NYC), Dubai Future Forum, Sundance Film Festival, NYC Design Pavilion, Simons Foundation, EYEO, Knight Foundation, New Museum,  Anderson Ranch Arts Center, IDEO, Code/Art, Cooper Union, Black Portraitures, TUMO, Eyebeam, ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication,  International Center of Photography, Iterations.Online, Women of Color in Engineering Collaborative, Design Academy Eindhoven (Netherlands), The Apollo Theater, Instrument, Kinfolk Foundation x  Brooklyn Bridge Park, Montclair State University, Futuresss, Eyebeam, The Lincoln Center


Residencies/
Fellowships
Pioneer Works’ Working Artist Fellowship (2025), University of Maryland’s Inaugural Arts for All Artist-in-Residence (2024), New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program Research Fellow (2021), ONX New Media Artist (2020), New York Live Arts Artist in Residence (2020), Maryland Institute College of Art Artist-in-Residence (2020), New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Inaugural Future Imagination Fund Fellow (2020), New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program Human-in-Residence (2020), Pioneer Works Technology Resident (2020), Eyebeam’s Rapid Response Artist Fellow (2020), New Inc + Nokia Bell Labs + Rhizome Experiments in Arts and Technology Artist (2019), Culture Hub Technology Resident (2019), Laundromat Project Create Change Fellow (2019), University of Denver’s Center for Open Source Arts Inaugural Contributor-in-Residence (2019), New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program “Postdoc” Research Fellow (2019), Processing Foundation Fellow (2018)               

Juried
Prix Ars Electronica, New Media Animation (2024, 2025)

Creative Capital Award Panels (2020–2022)

United States Artists, Knight Art + Tech Fellowship (Inaugural Jury 2021)

Interaction Design Awards (IxDA) Jury (2020)




Commissions / Consulting
The New York Times (Animation Artist)

GIPHY (Animation Artist)

The National Endowment for the Arts (Writer)

Carnegie Museum of Art (Writer)

Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School (Writer)

NYC Department of Education (Curriculum Advisor)

Creative Capital (Community Design Consultant)

Apple’s Made in NYC Mentorship Program (Mentor)









Last Updated 25.7.1
Synthesized Portraiture
2022-2023















Synthesized Portraiture
2022-2023Exhibited at Dubai’s Museum of the Future

Essay on “Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis”, here.







© ARICIANO 2025