Conversations with Bina48-- Deyoung Museum Installation on view thru April 2021
Conversations with Bina48
2014 - Ongoing
A quest for friendship with a humanoid robot turned into a rabbit-hole of questions about the future and an examination of the codification of social, cultural and future histories at the intersection of technology, race, gender and social equity.
Can an artist and a social robot build a relationship over time?
Artist Stephanie Dinkins and Bina48, one of the worlds most advanced social robots, test this question through a series of ongoing videotaped conversations. This art project explores the possibility of a longterm relationship between a person and an autonomous robot that is based on emotional interaction and potentially reveals important aspects of human-robot interaction and the human condition.
The relationship is being built with Bina48 (Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture, 48 exaflops per second) an intelligent computer built by Terasem Movement Foundation that is said to be capable of independent thought and emotion.
Terasem Movement Foundation is working to transfer the consciousness of a living person to the robot and to have that consciousness continue to grow independent of the person she is based on. Through Conversations with Bina48, Dinkins 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).
Thus far the two have discussed family, racism, faith, robot civil rights, loneliness, knowledge and Bina48’s concern for her robot friend that are treated more like lab rats than people. At first meeting Dinkins asked the robot "Who are your people?" along with questions about race, love and relationship. Bina48 preferred to talk about the singularity and consciousness. Their conversations have been entertaining, frustrating for both robot and artist, laced with humor, surprising, philosophical and at times absurd.
For exhibitions short fragments of conversations between Dinkins & Bina48 are juxtaposed on connected video screens. Fragments are combined to make meaning and mimic the disjunctive nature of their conversations.
Conversations with Bina48: Fragments 7, 6, 5, 2 , digital video installation 4 monitors with plain black fronts at least 32 inches each. wall mounts. Duration 4 minutes, 2018. The review copy here has gathers the four component videos on one screen and shortened them for faster viewing.

Conversations with Bina48: Fragment 11, Fourth Mirror, 2018 --2 minutes, 45 seconds
Iterations of Conversations with Bina48 have been exhibited at: International Center of Photography, NY, NY, Stamps Gallery, University of Michigan, David C Driskell Center, University of Maryland, MD, The Cooper Gallery, Harvard University, Transfer Gallery Pop-up On Canal, Broadway NYC , The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, Bitforms Gallery, NY, NY, Transfer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. The project is headed to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN late 2020 or early 2021. The Whitney Museum purchased Conversations with Bina48: Fragments 7, 6, 4, 2 in 2019.
Conversations With Bina48 early fragments. |
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