Good afternoon everyone. It's our Friday
afternoon session of Art&&Code Homemade. I'm Golan Levin director of The Frank Ratchye Studio
for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon and director of the Art&&Code festival. And it's my pleasure to
introduce the beginning of our Friday afternoon session. We're going to have three presentations
by Ari Melenciano, Sarah Rosalena Brady, and Imin Yeh. And just another quick announcement,
there has been unfortunately a cancellation at 5:30 this afternoon Olivia Michaela Ross
has had to cancel we've just learned. So there will be a gap at 5:30. We'll talk more
about that when we do the evening session. But we will still have Leah Buechley and Nanibah Chacon at 5 o'clock. So with that, it's my pleasure to introduce Ari Melenciano who is an
artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, and educator whose research combines approaches
from human-computer interaction, Afrocentric design practices, and experimental pedagogy. She is the
founder of Afrotechtopia, a social institution fostering interdisciplinary innovation at
the intersections of art, design, technology, black culture, and activism. And she currently
teaches creative technology and counterculture at you.
And with that, Ari Melenciano. Thank you for having me, very excited to be here. And I will talk quickly because I usually put in
too many slides in my presentations and I know we're on a quick time span. So I'll be talking about
electromedia, design, and culture which is where a lot of my work lies. So again I'm Ari Melenciano
and at the core of who I am as far as my practice, I've always identified as an artist and
have found that design and creative technology are really great vehicles for me to use to continue
expanding the possibilities of art. And a lot of my work is built off of research.
So I'm constantly
engaging in research and studying different facets of the world. I often turn all of this work into
classroom environments. I teach a lot at different universities. And in being a teacher I feel like
I'm always fortunate enough to be a student to continue to learn from the students that I have.
So with my electrical media practice it spans a lot of different mediums. But it generally
started from a project called Ojo Oro which I created while a graduate student at NYU's
interactive telecommunications program. And this was a dream project for me because I grew up as
someone that loved photography and taking pictures and documenting moments.
But also having a really
beautiful experience with digital photography, but an even more beautiful experience with analog
photography. And I wanted to create something that kind of blended both of those worlds. So in
being someone that just loved the aesthetics of different cameras especially film cameras, I feel
like there's a lot more attention to the craft and the design of them versus digital cameras
at the time. Now digital cameras are trying to mimic the aesthetics of a film camera, but at the
time they were like these kind of bulky machines. And so I wanted to create something that kind
of had the best of both worlds in that it was operated digitally but it mimicked the film-like
experience. So with this camera people would use it, it would take digital pictures, and then
it was also thinking about fashion of it being a sort of wearable device. You're
wearing it around your neck, so why not have it be something that's complementary to your outfit.
And then these are the different photos that it would take.
So it's digital but it's randomly
applying film-like filters onto the photos to create this sort of distortion and
colorfulness. And that's where the name Ojo Oro comes from which is spanish for goldeneye.
So it's meant to be a tool that allows you to realize your artistry in a way where you're not
scared of the end result. There's no mistake or error, just everything that comes
out of it is something to be treasured. And so then I continued expanding on that work and creating
sound sculptures, being really excited about how music could be created in new forms.
And so
I would create these sculptures that would allow people to engage them and turn different
knobs and that would then change the frequency or other forms in this. And so that continued
to expand as in the form of a series of work. One more recent series of work or body of work as
far as sound sculptures is in the name of Electro Negro Synesthesyo. So this is a compilation of different sound sculptures that are all rooted in afro or black cultural artifacts. And so being
obviously a black person and loving black culture and all the different artifacts that we have
in it, but also very attentive to the fact that a lot of different cultural artifacts, black
culture artifacts, when worn on black bodies have a negative stigma to them and they're seen
as something negative stereotypically and or unprofessional or whatever it is. Specifically when
worn on a black body, but when one on other bodies it seems it seems as trendy or cool.
So for me I'm
thinking a lot about what is the future of black culture outside of the white gaze. And it allows
where it's able to express itself and define itself on its own terms. So through this, I've
created these sound sculptures where I'm using these different cultural artifacts that have such
negative stigmas but recontextualizing them and placing them in a sort of future
where as people engage with them and their sound interactive they then are able to enter this new world. So when
touching things like the hair rollers or the do-rag or the bamboo earrings, you hear new
sounds.
Or even in touching the braids you hear them plays sounds in response
to it. And I'm also thinking about, there's this notion that you should never touch a black
woman's hair or black person's hair period. It can often be a very degrading act. But
I'm thinking what if it wasn't because it was degrading, but more of it was because, you know, the
the being the black being is too magical to touch, but if you do touch it you're entering this
new world.
So in creating this artifact I was exploring that. And then as you change the
different afro picks, it's not a sound tool it's actually I've embedded the sort of digital
DNA inside of each afro pick. So as you change the afro picks on that bed it then changes the
visuals that would be projected on the wall. Another more recent project is Metamorphosis. I
created this during the summer and just hearing the sounds of protests non-stop all
throughout the summer and wondering what is everything that we're going through,
doing to our bodies. And so thinking a lot about healing modalities and digital healing modalities
with us being in a remote era. So how turmoil and pain affect our body. Thinking about that scientifically and spiritually. And so I wanted to create a space.
I was also thinking about epigenetics as being a being. Epigenetics is an experience that
your body has without you physically having. Its ancestral sort of experience that you have that's
embedded within you. And so when we're constantly going through these tragic experiences that's
altering the way that we navigate through the world in our dna.
So I wanted to think of is it
possible to have a reversal of those negative epigenetics and create a positive epigenetics
and do that through sound and color. So with this called Metamorphosis.fm in that it's a change,
it's a larger change within our dna structure through frequency and the modulation of frequency
creates this experience where as you enter this space and listening to different sounds that tie
directly to different energy chakras, those would then potentially do some sort of reversal of
the negative epigenetics. And so I did a lot of research and studying sound and how that impacts the body and setting its relation to different chakras or energy centers. And then also
had known about African drum pattern music and that having been a tool to carry black people
and African people through pan-African revolutions through drum sounds. So I wanted to blend both
of those to create this audiovisual experience. And so thinking also about the architecture
of the space and moving through it and the psychogeography and its curved walls
allowed for relaxation calmness.
And so using those tactics inside of the space and then in
being a sound artist creating all the music and blending it all together. And
producing it to create this environment which I designed in cinema 4d and then exported it into a
web VR environment where also thinking about again psychogeography of higher ceilings. These are
things that we often experience when we're in a cathedral or a space of such significance. So also
placing that inside of this space if you feel like you're in a place that's really important and then
as you navigate through it you feel like this cycle, a cyclical kind of relationship
between you and the sound and the environment as you move through and enter these different
sphere areas. And then each section has its own music that's being played in that area alone and
each of those areas are designated for each of the different energy centers. And so in continuing
this, I've been exploring a lot about creating in web VR and virtual environments. And this is
a more recent project that I'm still developing that I'm presenting at Sundance this year in their
online environment, and it's called An Alchemy of Celestial Florilegia.
And so this is thinking about time being a very spherical thing. It exists and there are alternate
realities and this idea of existentialism. And what does it mean to exist? What does it mean
to understand language outside of the written or oral kind of passage of language?
And so it's a huge montage of just generally like a surrealist and existentialist
kind of understanding of the world. And so I'm going to move even quicker through
this research and pedagogy that we can go into and then go into Aphrodite.
So I can go into a Q&A.
So as I mentioned a lot of my work is built off of whole- it's built off of research. And I really
enjoy researching and understanding what people have done in the past and using that as a tool
it's a designing feature. So a lot of my work is very interdisciplinary which I found a lot
of similar relationship in my work as people like Stuart Brand and Victor Papanek have had in their own work of being very whole system thinking, of not focusing strictly on one facet
of life, but thinking about a lot of different parts of the world and how they all
have a relationship between each other. So things like the whole earth catalog and Victor
Papanek's work on politics for design have been really great resources for me.
And often
times when I'm engaging in this research and Omni-specialized design, I'm outputting it in the
form of a presentation like this where I'll talk about a lot of the different areas that I've
explored and how I'm bringing them all together, or they will take in the form of courses.
So I design courses at NYU and and teach them. And a few of them have been 'The Revolution Will
Be Digitized' where we're thinking about technology but in a holistic and comprehensive form where
it's not just about computer science, but it's about economics and sociology and public policy
and ecology and media and military. Or with Designing Club Culture which kind of the flip side of creative technology or electoral media in that it's not entirely about the social impacts of
tech in a negative kind of way, but more of like what has been allowed to exist,
because we have had access to election media. So how counter-culture movements have used
technology through various forms to create these kind of disco scenes and people have been
able to champion and realize their own kind of utopias within these spaces.
And a more recent
course that I'm teaching is called Afrotectopian Ecologies which is also very interdisciplinary kind of approach of combining a lot of different areas of research that I've been exploring and
kind of putting them all together into a course where we're understanding so many different
aspects of the world but within a few weeks. And so and then also
the research also takes forms in writing essays. I'll publish essays online about things
like radical technoculture, racial equity, or 'Building a Museum 350 Theories
in the Future', or a whole essay on Omni-specialization in design for beautiful
futures. And so what I've been working on and what I have had the support over the past summer
with ibeam as a fellow and now going into this new year with the support from Onyx in their
new kind of new media virtual reality kind of space and membership kind of thing with the new
museum is thinking of how can I translate all of this research into a virtual environment where I'm thinking about the architecture not only information architecture but also the architectural kind of renderings of a space in a digital space.
So thinking about the internet
not so much as a tool, it's a linear tool if you get from point a to point b, but moving away
from that and allowing for spontaneity and exploration. And not as a linear tool but an
explorative tool. And so as you enter the space you would then find different portals that are leading
you to environments that have information on a variety of different ideas like quantum mechanics
and sound design or environmentalism and diamonds. And so that's a more recent work
that I'm building out and working on. But I'm also, as the founder of Afrotectopia, thinking
a lot about not only virtual digital environments, but also communities and people and how we
can create spaces that cultivate imagination and creativity and, you know,
artistic stimulation and design stimulation. And so Afrotectopia has taken the form of a
lot of different things.
It started off as a new media festival and it's expanded. It started
as a new media festival. I was a graduate student. I created it there, and it has expanded into
being an alternative adult school. So last year we held 10 different classes
hosted by Verizon media. We also had a more recent conference or more recent festival. We had
last year at Google and this year we're going to have our- this year in the midst of a four week
long alternative adult school called Fractal Fête which is thinking a lot about a whole bunch of
ideas around art, design, black culture, technology, and activism. And we also just wrapped
up an international cohort fellowship where we were thinking about ways that we can use
technology and design and art to mitigate racial disparities and create these new worlds. And so
with Fractal Fête which is happening right now we have 20 different amazing and brilliant
black presenters and pan-African presenters in the spaces open exclusively to black and pan-African
people where we're just giving each other the space to explore, process and understanding,
you know, the behind the scenes for different creators and the things that they're thinking
about.
And have this kind of open dialogue so that we can get to know each other and build with
one another and explore new possibilities. And so generally the work with Afrotectopia has just
been to build a micro-community of imaginative innovators where it's really important for
us to have spaces where we can come together and explore and imagine. And to collaboratively
develop healthy black futures where we're not leaving that responsibility to other people,
but we're taking the agency within our own hands and designing it for ourselves. And to share all
of our research it's really about being as open source as possible and making sure that
anyone that doesn't have access to our space or our community in person or virtual can at least
have access to the work that we're building. And the biggest and the most important
thing has been to plant seeds for radical black imagination. So how can we create spaces
for people to just imagine and dream and place themselves in the future and work backwards from
there and create new forms and really really lean into their agency.
So I think I actually
talked a little too fast. I was worried about time, but that's where I am. So we can maybe have a longer time for Q&A. Ari thank you so much. This is great. We do have oh probably five to ten minutes for Q&A. So I'll pull from the discord.
I'm juggling a couple computers here but maybe the first question I have
for you just is to think about in the festival Art&&Code Homemade
sort of what we were thinking of by homemade and the curatorial, you know, advisors were also talking to me about this was not just necessarily homemade like, you know, apple pie or something like this but really that one would be making technologies for different audiences.
Perhaps in gift
cultures or, you know, technologies that one would make for oneself, one's friends, one's family, one's community, maybe even one's ancestors. And I wonder if you could speak to that notion of who the technologies are for when you think about in your thinking about Afrotectopia,
and it's trying to sort of instill or create a space for black technological
imagination. Is this about, you know, helping create black innovators who are going
to make technologies that are going to be mass-produced? Or is it about sort of helping
people create technologies for themselves and their friends and family? Or is it sort of all of that? How do you imagine who consumes and produces the
technologies from these? Yeah I think it's really also one thing that I started off
the fellowship with and you see the fellows in the lower right corner.
It was grounding
the work and making sure that they understand what Afrotectopia stands for, which is one that we understand that and we believe that technology is merely an extension of
human capability. So I think we definitely need to get away from this idea that technology is synonymous with computing and digitality like it has to be in this electric form. But it's
simply understanding that technology has always existed around us and it's something that's been
innate in things like ancestral intelligence and the way that indigenous people have operated
with the land and worked with the land. So I think for one it's making sure that it's creating a community that understands their capability and agency and understands
that the way that their ancestors have practiced all along have been what we've needed for technology in general and going forward. But it's also a space where we're thinking a
lot about not assuming that blackness is a monolith because, as you can see with the fellows here, the fellows were coming from all over the world for one and they have a lot of different ethnicities.
So some of them- one of them was Haitian in other words French, another is Ghanaian, like they're coming from all over. And though we have this shared idea of an
identity of blackness, we have very different understandings of what blackness means and the ways that we engage and practice with it. So it's also creating that kind of environment, but yeah I think for who's it for it's really just for people that are interested in being curious and exploring and realizing new potentials and ways to express themselves digitally if they
want to, or also outside of digital forms. But it's really just for people that are just
curious and want to learn more about the world. Another question coming from the chat is
do you have places that you think would be most impactful to share this work or that,
you know, you fantasize about? Like the goal, the holy grail would be to present this work like the question says 'like would x audience really get it or audience y at this
place should really be experiencing this'? I don't think I've
ever been asked that kind of question. Because I present these in all different kind of spaces, I think the goal for me like what I would love to do
in presenting the work of Afrotectopia is to present it to schools that are predominantly black.
Like elementary schools and middle schools and high schools that are predominantly black in their population. I think that excites me the most. Often times this work I'm presenting in areas that are like more predominantly white or something else. So I think for me that would-
Because that's why this was created. I created this because I grew up as someone that loved technology but was never a technologist it was more of an end user. So I never saw myself in this space at
all. So this was created because we need to be able to see each other and we don't know we need to know that these are things that we're capable of doing. And if we had access to it, these are
things that we would be doing. So just being able to see each other is the most important part of it. Yeah, something I've told the speakers is, you know, to give the talk that you would like to see. And, you know, it's been said you can't beat if you don't see it. And that can mean a lot of things, you know.
In one case, it's simply like the kind of way that
you work across so many different disciplines. I've mentioned several times in the
festival like this permission to be hybrid is so latent and embedded in your
work. And to see of course, you know, many different kinds of approaches
to technology being done here as well. There's a question on the the chat about, this is less about Afrotectopia more about like the physical things that you've shown, what's
informing the aesthetic choices you've made in your physical work? There's a question about
like the, you know, someone says I'd like to hear more about the influences and intentions behind the beautiful visual design language that you that you have across your work.
Where have you drawn from to make these? I think, well thank you
that's a kind question. I think I'm not sure where really where it comes from. I remember being in art school in undergrad and I was was always the only one that was
using a lot of color and everyone else was kind of using these minimal monochromatic kind of color palettes.
And and just having conversations with other people I realized and even just with my
family, I realized that that maybe is something that's more Caribbean or whatever it
is. Like my family is from the Caribbean. I'm Dominican American. So it could be that
maybe it's just kind of like a cultural thing that just kind of comes in. Because for me color
is really important and creating a space that just feels vibrant I think allows people
to feel very excited. But yeah I don't know where the other parts come in. Also I think
it's also just like this ancestral intelligence again of like the things that you kind of
do, which it's just stuff that you're- it's just in your DNA I guess.
And for me patterns
are really important. I love to blend together different patterned aesthetics and
create these new shapes and balance between complexity and kind of simplicity. So I don't know, I think it's kind of a mix of that of just color and patterns are really important to me. I think this will probably be our last question. It's again from the discord. Oh there's a
couple. But this one is where and when or where and/or when will there be opportunities
to experience the Metamorphosis virtual space? And also following on that, did you
incorporate any of the thinking of the work of Dr.Nadine Burke Harrison ACEs
which is adverse childhood experiences. No but I'm going to write that name down. That
sounds really interesting. It's in the chat as well. So is there a plan to exhibit or for people to experience the Metamorphosis virtual space? It's live now.
You could go to metamorphosis.fm and you'll be able to move through the space. But in just being asked that
question I've never really thought about exhibiting it outside of the website. But I
think that would be a really really really cool opportunity. And who are some people who are working on technology for activism or just other technological approaches in terms of
the way that that you think are aligned with what you are intensely interested in or that you feel
align with or whose work you admire and that we should look into? Do you want to give a shout out to anyone? Oh there's so many.
There's every speaker that's presenting at Fractal Fête. You
can look at that. And yesterday we had Ash Baccus-Clark. And the day before that we had Onyx Ashanti. So yeah you could definitely look at that lineup and find a lot of them. Thank you so much for sharing your energy and work and objectives with us Ari. It's really
inspirational and it's really important work for this kind of thing to happen and for
people to see it. It's lovely seeing you again and I hope you get to enjoy some more
of the festival too.
Yes, thank you for having me..