Observations on the practices by LGBTQ+ artist Stephanie Dinkins

Stephanie Dinkins is an explorer on the AI and algorithm field, but at the same time, her practice usually focuses on the LGBTQ+ community. The first thing that got my interest is that why AI with LGBTQ+ ? To get the answer, I have researched to some of her work and videos.

n her practice, she always emphasis questions with AI, “What does AI mean to you? How do we prepare to use it to our benefit ?” Her most iconic work Conversations with Bina48 tells a story of building up connections between human and robot. Stephanie treat the robot Bina48 as her friend, try to explore the ways of communication with robot. As an extension, she carry out another work named Project al-Khwarizmi (PAK). She invited people freely explore with the concept of AI and design the chatbot, aiming to lead the participants thinking of how to design algorithms to navigate daily life.

Both of the work play a lot with AI. The former are more personal to Stephanie as I think that Bina48 is somehow a reflection of the artist herself — she input her personal information via chatting and Bina48 different aspects of responses, helping her to find her own identity or concepts that she might not think about. The later will be more about educations for the public. In one of talk about her, she gives out examples on how algorithms nowadays doesn’t flavor the minority, such as the black being recognized as gorilla, or the Asian being recognized as not opening the eyes as their eyes are too small. Based on these facts, her intension become clear: helping the community to find out the meaning of algorithm, not just only searching for equality, but more about how to make the community become better via AI. She said that her art was a community practice and now I got what she is trying to do. Pretty interesting.

The art of Jeffrey Shaw and Expanded Cinema

When I was a HKBU undergraduate student, I was very honored to get a chance to be a guide of the Visualisation Research Centre, a project lead by Mr Shaw, trying its 180-degree projection cinema and 360-degree LED cinema. It was a very amazing experience. Mr Shaw had briefly explained with us about his concept and the project the project that he is on-going, and that was the first time I know the concept of expended cinema.

There are different approaches in the concept of expended cinema. A great example will be the Legible City, a famous work from Mr Shaw. In 2023, I have been to an exhibition named Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen at Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning. One of the exhibited work was this work and I do have a taste with that. The structure of it is quite simple: a bike, a screen, and a button in front of you and you can choose the map you want to walk through. It is interesting that the cities are replaced with the words that are related to that city and you can move your vision though riding on the bicycle. It was something simple that we can create in nowadays, but what truly amazed me was how early Mr Shaw was investing into this topic. He expended the cinema experience, not just only watching, but to participate or to interact with the cinema, which is also known as expended reality nowadays. It is impressive that he had already held such a vision in the 80’s.

 Legible City, 1989

When Mr Shaw was showing his current work at the Visualisation Research Centre, he had explained to us that the purpose of those advance cinema is to create a immersive space where audience can participate together, sharing their thoughts in real-time. It sounds something simple, but that is what the latest AR and VR systems cannot bring to us. It is not a term that only applies on the art field, but also entertainment and documentary, but the most important concept is the way to enhance the whole cinema experience, letting audience to actively interact and changing datas, but not just only passively receiving information which we do in the cinema most of the time.

360-degree cinema in the Visualisation Research Centre

The paintings of Pieter Schoolwerth

Topic: Pick one of Schoolwerth's paintings to focus on. Describe what you see in the selected image. How does the painting reflect the quality of a digital image?

In this review to Pieter Schoolwerth’s work, I have chosen The Opposite of Tweet (Rigged #32), 2022. It is a image work that using photo collages, drawings and 3d-generated images to construct the work. The work use blue as a base color and use fluorescence yellow to give the work a strong impact to the audience. By going deep into the images, I can see different animals and objects, including aliens, pufferfish formed by nike shoe, drone formed by a clock, virus with DNA images, etc., making the work looks strange. It recalls me the Metaphysical art by Giorgio de Chirico, which also love creating mysterious and strange mood in his work.

The Opposite of Tweet (Rigged #32), 2022

Yet, unlike Chirico, I do think that Schoolwerth's paintings lack of a sense of beauty. His work do actively using the advantage of digital image that it is easier than traditional paintings on recreating realistic textures or making things that hard to achieve in the reality, such as the pufferfish on the image. After a little research on the artist, I find that some of his images are recreated through video games like The Sims.I also read the discribition on this work and understand that what he want to do is to preset the view of social media in a new form, thus it is understandable that why his choose such a way of presentation. Yet, it doesn’t fully reflect the quality of digital images. Rendering, polygons, shadings, on 3d objects, or things like editing, layer effects on 2d image processing aren’t being fully used. What I would think is confusing instead of playful. Thus, I would say his work isn’t reflecting and unleashing the quality of a digital image.