In January, Tisch welcomed its inaugural cohort of Future Imagination Fellows to the Future Imagination Collaboratory, a bold new venture at Tisch, which aims to foster interdisciplinary, artist-led, solution-focused research to address the difficulties we all face in a rapidly changing world.
Individually, these Fellows have accomplished incredible things as creators, technologists, futurists, researchers, and entrepreneurs - pushing boundaries and creating new spaces for intersectional work. Now we have brought them together to explore what might happen when they work in proximity to one another, and to imagine a better future with us.
Supported by the new Future Imagination Fund, the Future Imagination Collaboratory will yield new investigations, new ideas and new questions. We look forward to sharing more about the Collaboratory in the coming months.
Ari Melenciano
Ari Melenciano is an artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, and futurist, who is passionate about exploring the relationships between various forms of design and the human experience. Currently, Her research lies at the intersections of human-computer interactive technologies, social impacts of technology, counterculture, sound, multisensory experiential design, experimental pedagogy and speculative design.
Ari is the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution fostering interdisciplinary innovation at the intersections of art, design, technology, Black culture and activism. Afrotectopia is most commonly experienced via their annual New Media Arts, Culture and Technology Festival hosted by Google. Afrotectopia also most recently developed The School of Afrotectopia, hosted by Verizon Media, serving 250 students through 2 weeks of free courses.
She currently teaches technology, society and design at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program (ITP) and the Pratt Institute's Communications Design school. Ari is continuing her research as an NYU Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program Fellow. She is incubating her electromedia art practice through technology residencies at Pioneer Works and Culture Hub, and is an Experiments in Arts and Technology track member at New Inc in partnership with Rhizome and Nokia Bell Labs.
She is also a consultant for NYC’s Department of Education, helping to build STEAM curriculum that is culturally relevant.
Ari has exhibited work at a variety of art and cultural institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Africa Center and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Ari obtained an M.P.S. from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications graduate Program (ITP) in 2018, and conducted research as an ITP Research Fellow from 2018-2019. She also studied art, design and architecture at The University of Maryland and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.