Digital Playground with Ari Melenciano
Generating New Possibilities for AI with Ari Melenciano
Join us for our first Digital Playground, a monthly series in partnership between New_ Public and All Tech Is Human.
Join us for our first Digital Playground, a monthly series, with artist, technologist, and researcher Ari Melenciano. The session will begin with a 30 minute look at select AI tools through the lens of Ari, who explores “computational anthropology” in her art and research. Ari’s work experiments with the possibilities and limits of AI, and invites us to ask new questions of the technology, like how can AI be a tool to reimagine creative practices? What are ways AI can be harnessed as a tool for both harm and empowerment? The session will close with a 30 minute deep-dive for participants to workshop, ask questions, and get their hands on an aspect of the session’s topic.
Digital Playground Series structure:
- Playground (30-40 minutes)
- Recess (10 minutes)
- Sandbox (30-40 minutes)
Facilitator Bio:
Ari Melenciano’s art and research practice explores computational anthropology, societal subconscious intellect, the ethnographical morphing of artistic expression across diasporas, speculative design, the formation and embodiment of mythology and rituals, and the materialization of omni-scoped research in the form of quasi-pseudosciences. She currently teaches courses on emerging technologies like A.I., art, and design at New York University and Parsons/ The New School. 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. She guest lectures at universities around the world.
About Digital Playgrounds:
Digital playgrounds is a monthly virtual program series hosted by New_ Public and All Tech Is Human, in the spirit of discovery, experimentation, and creation of healthier digital public spaces. The Digital Playground Series is part of New_ Public and All Tech Is Human’s year-long partnership as part of Community by Design, with the support of the Unfinished Network, to identify, define and map thriving healthy digital public spaces focused on building pluralistic, inclusive, open online spaces, and prioritizing the needs of their communities.
