Ari Melenciano has cultivated an expansive practice within and beyond the fields of art, design, technology, pedagogy, and culture. Her natural ability to combine many disciplines reveals both their interconnectedness, and reimagines their contemporary conventions introducing new possibilities.
Photograph by Dom MingAs an artist, some of her explorations have included using AI as a tool to study society through her Computational Anthropology series, sonic abstractions of plant data to create bio-sonifications, and 3D designing multi-modal healing environments in webVR. Her work has been supported by a variety of institutions including Sundance, Museum of the Future in Dubai, MoMA, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, New Museum, New Inc, Museum of Moving Image, The New York Times, The Studio Museum of Harlem, CultureHub, Nokia Bell Labs, Montclair State University Gallery, New York Magazine, Forbes, Pratt Institute, Deem Journal, Guild of Future Architects, New York Live Arts, The Laundromat Project, Onassis Foundation, and ONX.
As an academic and educator, she is invested in creating encouraging environments for her students to explore the most emerging technologies through imaginative, critical, and cultural lenses. She occasionally teaches at universities around New York City including New York University, Parsons School of Design, Hunter College, and The Pratt Institute. She has held academic residencies at Maryland Institute College of Art, University of Denver's Clinic for Open-Source Arts, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Future Imagination Fund, NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, and University of Maryland Arts-for-All. Melenciano was also a research affiliate at MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative. And, she consulted for New York City's Department of Education through their CS4ALL (computer science for all) initiative, where she designed human-computer interactive learning tools for culturally inclusive curriculum.
As a researcher and writer, some of her explorations have included cultural metacognition, consciousness, AI, alternative forms of intelligence, notions of design expanding beyond the Western canon, technoculture, and community building -- with commissioned writings done for The New School's Vera List Center, National Endowment of the Arts, and Carnegie Museum of Art.
As a designer, she has guest lectured extensively at universities around the country, including Parson's School of Design, ArtCenter's School of Design, SVA Products of Design, and Harvard's Black in Design conference.
While a graduate student at NYU, she founded Afrotectopia - a social institution that imagines new possibilities at the nexus of art, design, technology, activism, and culture. Afrotectopia has taken many forms, from festivals, to think tanks, summer camp, adult continued education programming, international residency, and incubator. Through her research affiliate role at MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration, and faculty role at New York University, she created an incubator to invite a handful of artists to collaborate in reimagining extraterrestrial space life through a cultural lens. The art and research developed through the incubator is being published in the form of an experimental art book titled, “Black Metal.”
Previously, she was a creative technologist at Google within their Creative Lab. Some projects she developed while there included creating technologies using machine learning on hardware devices the size of a finger, contributing creative direction for the Google for Africa campaign, and creative strategy for generative AI development.
She is a frequent public speaker at insitutions worldwide, on topics ranging from expansive ideas of design, speculative futures, AI, emerging technologies, and culture. She has also consulted and juried for a variety of leading institutions in the arts, technology, and design fields including Apple, Ars Electronica, Magnum Foundation, The Knight Foundation, IxDA NYC, and Creative Capital.
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