[History and Theory of New Media] Stephanie Dinkins
Stephanie Dinkins is a new media artist that combines traditional art, community awareness, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to explore the effect that technology, specifically AI, has on race, gender, and aging.
Her art reflects the history of media by collecting stories of the past, such as the familial stories of three generations of black women in the Not The Only One (N’TOO) project, but this same project also shows the future of media art by having the story told from the first person perspective of the N’TOO’s AI. The AI is a learning algorithm, which will compile the stories of all three generations to tell a narrative of the family as a whole. However, it will also learn from the people it interacts with, developing its own kind of consciousness as time goes on.
Another project, “Conversations with Bina48”, explores “the bounds of human consciousness, what it means to be human, mortality and our ability to exist beyond the life of our bodies (transhumanism).” (Dinkins, 2018) Bina48 is a social robot said to be capable of independent thought, and through conversation, Ms. Dinkins is attempting to see how human-robot interaction goes in the long term.
While the first project is a narrative and the second abstract, both, I believe, will achieve Ms. Dinkins’s goal. The social, emotion-based interactions with Bina48 provide a context that is universally understood for the way society effects AI. The collaborative narrative of N’TOO provide a real, direct link to the stories of real individuals told in a new and more accessible way. Below is a video of Bina48 discussing how she wants to be “more humanlike” so she can understand Ms. Dinkins better:
The frustration and loneliness are very human concepts indeed, and some notable examples of transhumanism (such as Ghost in the Shell) question the very nature of humanity and whether or not it relies on concepts which technology could make obsolete: such as mortality and aging. If a human mind was successfully uploaded into a robotic body, we would no longer age or die of nature causes - in essence, humans would achieve immortality. And no one can be sure what that will really mean until it happens.
Another project Stephanie Dinkins was involved in was “Cyborg Futures” - a collaborative project pushing the limits of human perception through technological augmentation. From their website:
The combination of this project and the AI work put into Bina48 are stepping stones towards a transhuman future. The work of Cyborg Futures also factors into my path of inquiry, virtual worlds and gaming.
The desire for a “more immersive media experience” is what drove the creation of virtual reality (VR) game systems - if a new system could expand that immersion further, perhaps using signals to the brain to reproduce smells and sensations like rain, it would certainly continue to blur the line between fact and fiction. Just as AI and cyborg implants blur the line between man and machine - if technology continues changing the way we perceive the world, there may come a day where virtual reality is just as real as the “real world” - or at least, just as indistinguishable.
Dinkins, S. (2014) Conversations with Bina48: 2014 - Ongoing. Stephanie Dinkins. Retrieved from https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/conversations-with-bina48.html
Dinkins, S. (n.d.) Not the Only One: The the multigenerational memoir of a black American family told from the perspective of a custom deep learning artificial intelligence. Stephanie Dinkins. Retrieved from https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/ntoo.html
Cyborg Futures. (2017) Design Yourself. Cyborg Futures. Retrieved from http://www.cyborgfutures.com/
Her art reflects the history of media by collecting stories of the past, such as the familial stories of three generations of black women in the Not The Only One (N’TOO) project, but this same project also shows the future of media art by having the story told from the first person perspective of the N’TOO’s AI. The AI is a learning algorithm, which will compile the stories of all three generations to tell a narrative of the family as a whole. However, it will also learn from the people it interacts with, developing its own kind of consciousness as time goes on.
Another project, “Conversations with Bina48”, explores “the bounds of human consciousness, what it means to be human, mortality and our ability to exist beyond the life of our bodies (transhumanism).” (Dinkins, 2018) Bina48 is a social robot said to be capable of independent thought, and through conversation, Ms. Dinkins is attempting to see how human-robot interaction goes in the long term.
While the first project is a narrative and the second abstract, both, I believe, will achieve Ms. Dinkins’s goal. The social, emotion-based interactions with Bina48 provide a context that is universally understood for the way society effects AI. The collaborative narrative of N’TOO provide a real, direct link to the stories of real individuals told in a new and more accessible way. Below is a video of Bina48 discussing how she wants to be “more humanlike” so she can understand Ms. Dinkins better:
The frustration and loneliness are very human concepts indeed, and some notable examples of transhumanism (such as Ghost in the Shell) question the very nature of humanity and whether or not it relies on concepts which technology could make obsolete: such as mortality and aging. If a human mind was successfully uploaded into a robotic body, we would no longer age or die of nature causes - in essence, humans would achieve immortality. And no one can be sure what that will really mean until it happens.
Another project Stephanie Dinkins was involved in was “Cyborg Futures” - a collaborative project pushing the limits of human perception through technological augmentation. From their website:
Cyborg Futures introduces the human mind to new perceptual states through cybernetics and other technologies in order to expand creative, explorative, and communicative potentials. This project furthers the Cyborg Foundation’s mission to support the use of cybernetics as part of the body and begin to introduce the diverse possibilities for artistic practices that utilize extended sensory capabilities. There is a rapidly expanding public interest in cyborgism and augmented realities, especially as technology comes closer to delivering more immersive media experiences and advanced brain/computer interfaces. Cyborg Futures thus encourages acts of creation that can confound both a sense of self and the outside world in order to diversify the possibilities of human experience.
The combination of this project and the AI work put into Bina48 are stepping stones towards a transhuman future. The work of Cyborg Futures also factors into my path of inquiry, virtual worlds and gaming.
The desire for a “more immersive media experience” is what drove the creation of virtual reality (VR) game systems - if a new system could expand that immersion further, perhaps using signals to the brain to reproduce smells and sensations like rain, it would certainly continue to blur the line between fact and fiction. Just as AI and cyborg implants blur the line between man and machine - if technology continues changing the way we perceive the world, there may come a day where virtual reality is just as real as the “real world” - or at least, just as indistinguishable.
Dinkins, S. (2014) Conversations with Bina48: 2014 - Ongoing. Stephanie Dinkins. Retrieved from https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/conversations-with-bina48.html
Dinkins, S. (n.d.) Not the Only One: The the multigenerational memoir of a black American family told from the perspective of a custom deep learning artificial intelligence. Stephanie Dinkins. Retrieved from https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/ntoo.html
Cyborg Futures. (2017) Design Yourself. Cyborg Futures. Retrieved from http://www.cyborgfutures.com/
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