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.  

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Ari is a frequent public speaker and guest lecturer at universities around the world, sharing her research on creative and societally inquisitive uses of emerging technologies. Currently, she is University of Maryland’s Inaugural Arts for All Artist-in-Residence. She occasionally designs and teaches courses at New York University, The Pratt Institute’s Design School, Parsons School of Design of The New School, and Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts Program.

She is also the founder of Afrotectopia, a cultural institution that is imagining, researching, and building at the nexus of new media art, design, science, and technology through a Black and Afrocentric lens. Currently, through Afrotectopia she is self-publishing a book called, Black Metal, with the support of MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative (past research affiliate), New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program (previously faculty), and the Ford Foundation.

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