Flowers
public outputs | final form
This section includes recorded talks, podcasts, essays, and other finished publicly released work.
April 2024
Studio Visit Vlog
My long time friend, Dev Moore, stopped by the studio back in January to see the body of work I had created during my self-designed residency. The video is a collection of a bunch of exciting talent in the city. Mine starts at 17:04, here.
March 2024
Brooklyn Arts Council’s Thrive Fest 2024
at BRIC on the panel, “/Blend — The Promise and Perils of AI in the Arts” with Ari Melenciano, Carla Gannis, Sam Israel, and Eli Kuslansky. Photos by Fernando Rodriguez
February 2024
Women of Color in Engineering Collaborative’s Fireside Chat with Ari Melenciano
This Fireside Chat was moderated by Stephani Page, PhD. Ari delved into her remarkable journey, from battling the lack of representation in tech to becoming a trailblazer in her own right.
Ari and Stephani discussed:
- Overcoming Obstacles: Ari shared how the initial lack of representation in the tech industry initially discouraged her, and how she persevered to carve her own path.
- Innovating in Education: Insights on designing STEM education in diverse and inclusive ways, ensuring that everyone has access to quality learning opportunities.
- Empowering Black Technologists: The story behind Afrotectopia, the vibrant community Ari founded to empower and uplift Black technologists, fostering a space for creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
- Exploring AI and Society: Ari briefly shared her recent explorations with artificial intelligence, exploring its role as a mirror to society and the profound implications it holds for the future.
University of Maryland’s Inaugural Arts for All Artist-in-Residence
For the Spring 2024 Semester
Article, here.
January 2024
New Frontier’s “Let’s Rebrand AI” Panel at Sundance
Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Navid Khonsari, Ari Melenciano and Rashaad Newsome attend New Frontier: Let's Rebrand AI on Day 4 of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. | photo by Stephen Greathouse / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival.
December 2023
Presenting at Iterations
Exhibited research on sentient code - correlations between sound, spirituality, consciousness, and quantum botany.
Slides from keynote:
Youtube link to presentation
November 2023
Presenting at Dubai Future Forum
Exhibited AI art at the Museum of the future, gave a talk on my research on Computational Anthropology and Identity Synthesis with AI, and moderated a panel titled, “Towards Other Futures”
October 2023
Sculpting Consciousness: Mythopoesis, AI, and the Symphony of Cultural Metacognition
Ari Melenciano presenting at "Sculpting Consciousness Mythopoesis, AI, and the Symphony of Cultural Metacognition" 2023 What IF Summit
Ari Melenciano’s art and research practice has existed at a pivotal nexus between collective consciousness and subconsciousness – studied through the harmonious interplay of mythopoesis, AI exploration, and cultural metacognition. In this talk, Ari unveils the threads that weave our collective narratives, transcending epochs and traditions. At the heart of her exploration lies an intricate dance between the avant-garde and the ancestral, molding new pathways of artistic synthesis. This session also delves into mythic realms and psychoanalytic inquiries, entwined with spiritual echoes from diasporas, fostering a deepened understanding of self and society.
AI & Art: Reflections on Language, Myths and Culture with Ari Melenciano
This event features a discussion with Ari Melenciano, an exhibiting artist in the Montclair State University Galleries' fall exhibition The Backend, who's using AI both artistically and as a tool for societal inquiry. Ari's current art and research practice is deeply invested in studying consciousness, both as a mythopoetic technique for unveiling the collective unconscious in her studio practice and through a computational anthropological approach with AI to understand the collective conscious. Through her interrogation of notions of truth and objectivity, her work reveals the influence of myths that humanity is rooted within, as well as how the power dynamics of language are being automated through AI. The artist will engage in a conversation with Montclair faculty, including Charlotte Kent, Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Julian Brash, Associate Professor of Anthropology.
Presented with Research on Interdisciplinary Global Studies (RIGS) and supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Departments for Anthropology, Art & Design, Justice Studies, Religion and Sociology.
Sculpting Consciousness: Art as a Materialization of Research — and Vice Versa (essay)
Phase One findings of the Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier in designing a metacognitive art practice through pluralistic intelligences.
Cloud Salon at Parson’s Design and Technology Program
A lecture on designing an artistic and research practice through psychoanalysis and mythopoesis. This talk is attempting to open-source the process. This talk also briefly explores bio-sonification, power of language/ metadata of LLMs, cultural metacognition, and generative AI.
Montclair State Gallery’s The Backend Exhibition
Montclair State University, NJ
Ari Melenciano’s CA001: Synthesized Identity and CA002: Synthesized Archive delve into contemporary Western world AI imaging technologies to better understand their capabilities and limitations. Their image outputs are a mirror to society's understanding of themselves and the societies around them, revealing image outputs that range in accuracy. Melenciano uses both self-portraiture and archival materials as the foundation for her works and inputs a series of text-based prompts into an AI imaging machine to influence how her appearance and historical images are rendered and transformed, revealing the tool’s understanding of social, cultural, and political nuance or lack thereof.
September 2023
Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo at University of Maryland’s NextNow Fest
College Park, MD
Photos by David Andrews and Josh Nathan Jr.
Biosonification Performance at Ford Foundation Gallery’s “What Models Make Worlds: Critical Imaginaries of AI” Exhibition
NY, NY
July 2023
Technically Optimistic podcast conversation with Raffi Krikorian of the Emerson Collective
Listen, here.
Long Distance podcast conversation with DJ Dre Ngozi
#Afrofunk #Afrojazz
“We dive into the art of biosonification, module synthesizers, AI and identity exploration, artistic experimentation and the vibrant world of African diasporic music. She also blessed us with a 🔥 30-mins mix of afrofunk, Afro Jazz and more.”
Listen, here.June 2023
Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo at Andrew Herzog’s WHAT NOW exhibition
Brooklyn, NY
May 2023
Paradoxical Intelligence (essay)
I wrote an essay on the paradoxes of contemporary Western concepts of intelligence, while unpacking notions of "truth" and "correction" that have existed within society and are being perpetuated through AI.
Commissioned by The New School's Vera List Center. Read, here.
Exploring Our Identities Through AI Synthesis workshop at WIX
NY, NY
March 2023
MIT Media Lab’s Lunch Lecture series organized by the Future Sketches group
SXSW on the panel Designing Equity Through an Afrofuturist Lens (audio recording, here)
(I don’t label myself an Afrofuturist but do appreciate it’s practice and impact)
Code/Art Fest 2023 - Women in Art & Tech Panel
Code/Art Fest 2023 - Closing Keynote with Ari Melenciano
Cosmos Experience: Towards New Sensemaking - AI, Art, Creativity & Aesthetics at Mozilla Foundation’s MozFest 2023
“Given the ways AI is reshaping our understanding of the world, eachOther, ourselves, ie notions of truth or reality more fundamentally, thinking these technologies with and through art, aesthetic, and creative practice becomes essential. As art, anchored in the experiential, the sensuous, the tactile and visceral, introduces different notions of truth and sensemaking.
Art begets us to not only envision the world differently but also allows for nuanced and novel modes of engagement, questioning, and experiencing.
How does thinking AI and art together re/orient us towards communal, embodied, or concerted presence, performance, or relationships with technologies?
How does Art, aesthetics, and other creative forms of sensemaking evoke different possibilities for engaging and inhabiting our socio-technical or AI entanglements?
Invited artist, Ari Melenciano, will present her art and research practice that explores computational anthropology, societal subconscious intellect, the ethnographical morphing of artistic expression across diasporas, speculative design, the formation and embodiment of mythology and rituals, and the materialization of omni-scoped research in the form of quasi-pseudosciences.
This session is a Speculative Salon-styled discussion format where Ari Melenciano will share their work and perspectives while responding to participants' comments and curiosities and will close with a moment of reflection and collective contemplation around what might AI might mean for art and creativity.” Full video not available but here’s the recap video:
Jan 2023 Public Talk with TheHost.is, HyphenLabs, and Ari Melenciano
︎
Seeds
process | research | studio art
This section includes images of unfinished explorations, experiments, process, research, interviews, pedagogy, etc.
Interview
with Backtolisten | Feb 2024Listen, here.
Forces Of Thought LESSON DESCRIPTION:
Ari Melenciano's lesson 'Forces Of Thought' explores the arrangements of her thoughts and artistic practice. In this lesson, she shares whether understanding has a role to play in creating art. Reflecting on her own experience surfacing and organizing information as a Creative Technologist and as a Teacher. Within her studio and research practice, she is currently designing epistemologies for artistic expression that explore the collective conscious and unconscious. The frequencies and sounds of this lesson were inspired by Mediatheque Library in Japan designed by Toyo Ito, combining both the physical and digital systems of the building - was Ito response to how new technology was changing the world. The building would withstand the devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Ito is very much influenced by nature and created a wireframe for information to flow the same way as nature would intended. His approach to architecture challenged conventional logic and thinking.
Photos by Katarina Felix
Essay
“Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble”February 2024
In this essay, I wrote a reflection on the process, development, materialization, and exhibition of this current body of research (cultural metacognition, consciousness, psychoanalysis, sentient technologies) into art artifacts of the Otzkö Kazo culture. Read, here.
Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier |
“Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble”January 2024
After 1.5 years of concentrated research and development to create a foundation for my art and research practice, I hosted studio visits with people of my community to intimately share the world of Otzkö Kazo. The title of the studio-visit-exhibition, Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble, reflects a collaboration with and embodiment of 12 created archetypes, through sound and other means (essay, soon).
Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier |
ProcessDecember 2023
Prepping to open the studio to guests:
Biosonification of Plants into Modular Synthesis |
ExperimentingNovember 2023
Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier |
The FoundationsOctober 2023
I’m wrapping up a year of designing an art residency and creating the world/art and research practice of Otzkö Kazo. These images are from an essay recently published on the research conducted, and the art created out of this practice.
Film from Armenia
Was hosted by the TUMO Center for AI and Education Symposium in Yerevan, Armenia to present work.
2023
Other imagery from event:
Course: Myths, Rituals, and Sounds
Taught a course to MFA Hunter College IMA students. Here are some slides I shared with the students in discussing my mythopoeisis process, as a potential template for their creative practices.
2023
Film of Summer in Studio
2023
Symphosynthesis de Soloro and Seira 001
2023
I’ve been building my own world, called Otzkö Kazo. Its intellectual seeds are finally bearing fruit. I’m trying to synopsize its explorations into a few words like Supratemporal-Scientomythopeoia - which generally reflects my interests in studying what’s possible if when we consider mythology to predate science, what happens when mythology transcends contemporary scientific frameworks.
The sound was designed using the original quantum computers, plants - of my garden, and converting its photosynthetic process into electronic voltage for a form of bio-sonification. Overlaid with other beats I’ve built exploring time structures.
Hues of Stzair Echology | 001
2022Hues of Stzair Echology a series of is a live modular synthesizer sets that explore polyrhythmic beatmaking, celestially-inspired sound manipulation, and quasi-Jazz/freesound improvisation on a euclidean sonic structure.
Cosmic Radio (series)
2014-2022
2014+
Watercolor on rice paper
From the archive
Framed in 2022
OhFela (Afrobeats DJ Mix)
An hour long excerpt from a 6 hour long set on some of the most popular Afrobeat songs of 2022. A nod to Fela Kuti, the original pioneer of Afrobeats.
Alternative Life (series)
2022Rendered images of alternative life via personalized image generations, diffusion model (Dreambooth + Stable Diffusion)
“From me and mine to you and yours❤️ ”
Oct 2022A comical exploration on Instagram for Thanksgiving Day as I rendered artificial images of “myself and my family” celebrating the holiday.
Abstracted Sense of Self
Oct 2022My explorations with AI Image generation have catalyzed existential wonderings around my understanding of my own identity, and its performance.
Movement Synthesis
Oct 2022Rendered images of movement via personalized image generations, diffusion model (Dreambooth + Stable Diffusion)
Light Painting Studies 01
2022
Recontextualizing Labor for Artistic Imaginings
2022
Through this I wanted to explore labor:
- the act of it,
- the context of it and how what’s considered labor and not worth financial compensation based off of societal values,
- and recontextualizing the movements of labor by using paint pigment to memoralize a usually temporal event
Jatal0 (Vinyl DJ Mix)
2022
Crate digging of vinyl in Barcelona. From Italo Disco to Bossa-Negra to Spanish rap to Dubhouse to Jamaican Jazz and beyondAbraboAbrabo (Vinyl DJ Mix)
2022
A collage of the melding and bending sounds of the African diaspora's vibrant percussive forms via vinyl.
MongoMangione (Vinyl DJ Mix)
2022
First time spinning and mixing with vinyl. From AfroCuban JazzFunk to Congolese drumming to Japanese electronic minimalism.
Strawberry Sounds
2022
A conversion of the electromagnetic waves of my strawberry plants into sounds through my modular synthesizer for a materialized sonic composition of biology.
Older work | “compost”
Sono de BedWabiStuySabi
2021
A live modular synthesis set merged with environmental sounds of Bed-Stuy, BrooklynFull performance, here.
Electrocology of Sound Travel
2020
Sonically materializing climate data during COVID-19 through a webVR platform. Supported by the Onassis Foundation.Experience, here.Metamorphosis.FM
2020
![]()
An immersive WebVR healing environment that merges indigenous African instrumentalization for revolutions with visual and sonic healing auras of Eastern Spiritual practices, along with psychogeographical techniques.
Experience, here.
Essay | Notes on Omni-Specialized Design for Beautiful Futures
2022
ElectroNegroSynesthesyo
2019
Series of Black cultural artifacts converted into audio-visual instruments - a speculation on the future of culture through re-contextualization
Essay | Radical Technoculture for Racial Equity
2019-20
