Ari Melenciano has cultivated an expansive practice within the arts, technology, design, culture and pedagogy. Her natural ability to combine many disciplines reveals their interconnectedness and reimagines their conventions for new possibilities. Her art practice ranges from using AI through both critical and imaginative lenses, to sound design using botanical data. Her work has been exhibited around the world, from Dubai’s Museum of the Future to Studio Museum in Harlem. She’s a frequent international public speaker and occasionally designs and teaches courses at New York University, Hunter College, the Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute. She’s the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution that imagines new possibilities at the nexus of art, design, technology, activism and culture. Afrotectopia has taken many forms, including festivals, think tanks, a summer camp, adult continued education programming, an international residency, and an incubator. Previously, she was a creative technologist at Google’s Creative Lab.