At 300 Ashland Place in Brooklyn, a new public art installation by Stephanie Dinkins is engaging visitors in conversations about artificial intelligence and identity. The project, titled If We Don’t, Who Will?, features a yellow shipping container displaying holographic images generated by AI from stories shared by the public. Dinkins, a professor of art at Stony Brook University and a 2023 TIME100 Innovator in AI, designed the installation to explore how underrepresented groups can influence the way machines understand human experience.
The installation, presented by More Art, invites visitors to share their stories through a custom app called The Stories We Tell Our Machines. These stories, submitted in multiple languages, are translated first by ChatGPT and then refined with input from native speakers. “It’s better to offer the option, even imperfectly, than not at all,” Dinkins said. “That, to me, honors people.”
Inside the container, artists lead discussions about AI and identity, encouraging participation from the local community. The project’s multilingual approach includes English, Spanish, French Creole, Swahili, Tagalog, Amharic, and others.
Dinkins has also launched a related project, Data Trust, which debuted at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. This work encodes narratives from Black and brown communities into DNA, which is then embedded in living plants such as okra and California black oak trees. According to Dinkins, “a weird poem” emerges when these encoded texts are decoded, combining elements of math, memory, and philosophy.
More information about Stephanie Dinkins’ projects can be found on the AI Innovation Institute website.
