Stephanie Dinkins receives first LG Guggenheim Award for AI art

Stephanie Dinkins, an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award, which carries a $100,000 prize. This award was created through the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, a five-year program established in 2022 to honor artists merging art and technology. Dinkins, who teaches at Stony Brook University in New York, frequently employs artificial intelligence in her practice, developing chatbots, virtual and augmented reality experiences, and gallery installations. Her work with AI focuses on themes like memory, intimacy, poetics, and playfulness, training models and tools to build a technological ecosystem that prioritizes social value, cultural sensitivities, and care. According to the jury, Dinkins uses interactive installations, sculpture, video, web projects, writing, and community workshops to explore family structures, oral histories, and small data. The jury noted that her local-scale changes inspire visions for new global technological ecosystems.