Ιoannis Melanitis (Ιωάννης Μελανίτης) is an artist, theorist, and Associate Professor at The Athens School of Fine Arts, Vice-Rector of International Relations and Extroversion. Melanitis’ work initiates from a theorization of contemporary art strategies, emphasizing the role of code and information, considering “Information as a new Conceptualisation”. In the philosophical realm, significance is provided to questions on the “provenance” of ideas, artistic probability, and the “art of new informational distributions in nature”.

This abstraction has been corporealized even in trans-species informational exchanges. Incorporations of bio-code between organisms, as exemplified in the work LEDA TRANSGENICA, concern an artist’s gene, micro-injected into the butterfly named Leda Melanitis for the creation of a transgenic, adult butterfly breed [see Leda Melanitis Transgenica at the MACRO MUSEUM ROME]. Within this scheme, which includes revised pataphysic ideas from Alfred Jarry and Duchamp, he intensifies on humour, the role of machines, and the concept of mimicry through information.

Using divergent technical approaches, oil paintings and sculptures recast linkages between philosophy, language and politics. The paintings, often dysmorphic, designate linkages between the comical, humorous, and political camouflage during the mimetic act of portraiture.

His artworks include installations, performances, bioartworks, theoretical texts, critique, poems, code-based web artworks, sculptures, oil paintings and drawings. Early works since 1999 included robotic and coding art, bioart and virtual spaces.

In other series of artworks, he references the mechanics of speech with the concept of the alienation of logic from the human as its inward administrator. Political speech and philosophy arising from machines and computers, render humans to mere ‘watchers’ or envisage new roles to society. Melanitis attempts to prognosticate that even official, state structures of dialectics that will be produced in the future may derive from self-programming AI computers. He presents works of interactive dialectics through the computer, which fabricate a philosophical dialogue with the public, remodelling the art of rhetoric through calculation (i.e., in the work “Random Rhetoric” commissioned for Ars Electronica 2020). Since 1998, he has initiated the art of robotics and bioart projects in Greece.

Exhibited in Austria, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, the UK, Portugal, Switzerland, the US, Scotland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece. Latest work presentations include Ars Electronica 2020, MACRO Museum (Rome); at the National Museum of Brazil; the Biblioteque of Brazil; Museu D. Diogo de Sousa, Braga, Portugal; the Tongeren Museum και Praetorium, Belgium, N.York MIT PRESS. Works acquired by HUG, Geneva, “Collection R”, Belgium (exhibited in Sofacq Gallery, Belgium), the Civic Museum of Crema and private collections.

Melanitis has published essays on art and philosophy in English and Greek. His Greek texts are translated into English, Russian, Italian, Korean, Chinese. Texts by Melanitis were published among others, by: Parkview Museum China (partA and partB interviews), 1st AICA Conference Italia, Nova24 newspaper Italy, NOEMA journal, MIT Media Lab, DCAC-2023 Conference, Days of Art magazine, S+T+Arts, Ars Electronica 2020, CYFEST Russia, Lomonosov University, Museo Civico di Crema e del Cremasco- Italy, Artonworld magazine, POSTERINTERFACE MAGAZINE, CLOT magazine, ΙSEA, TWIXLab, DIGICULT, New York University- Silver Center for Arts and Science, Pisa University, Taboo-Transgression-Transcendence. His recent talk at Nanjing University of Arts China (2024), was on Art and BIOMIMICRY. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee at the International Conference Innovation and Integration: A symphony of history, technology and art, China 2024/Herança – History, Heritage and Culture Journal. He also spoke to the EUROPEAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS, ARTS MEET SCIENCES COLLOQUIUM 2024.

As a subject of criticism, his work is included in international books-editions as “Art Tomorrow)” (Ed. L. Smith), Leonardo MIT, ScienceArt by Lomonosov University Russia, BIOART by Seung-Chol Shin, Bioart practices by Assimina Kaniari, Arte Transgenica by Mario Savini , Mind the Gap: La vita tra bioarte by Elena Giulia Rossi,, Magdalena Lange, Qinyue Liu, Carmelita Brunetti, Christiana Kazakou, Christopher Coleman, Gabrielle Romeo, Pier Luigi Capucci and Giorgio Cipolletta, S. Goudouna, Federica Fontana, Silvia Scaravaggi, and Camilla Latini, among others.
He holds degrees in painting, sculpture and digital arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and is presently a PhD candidate at the School of Architecture, (NTUA) with a thesis entitled: Biological Dynamics in Art. He has been a member of the Delphi Society.