Serpentine is delighted to announce the launch of the Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship, a new flagship programme of Serpentine’s work facilitating artistic practice, research and experimentation in art and advanced technologies. Supported by a new, three-year partnership with Glass Castle, which also includes a significant contribution to one major commission each year, the fellowship facilitates the inquiries of four pioneering practitioners across art and technology. The programme will connect creative research and development with industry, academia and policy to shape how emerging technologies are developed, understood and used.
Selected from an international open call to artists, curators, organisers, producers and technologists from around the world, that attracted close to 1,000 applications, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Alice Bucknell, Auriea Harvey and Reina Mun will undertake original research over a six-month programme commencing in September 2026, exploring how advances in AI are reshaping cultural production, institutions and public life.
The fellowship is founded on the belief that artists are not simply observers of technological change, but essential contributors to it, creating opportunities for practitioners to shape wider conversations about how emerging technologies are governed. The fellows will each receive a meaningful bursary and travel to London, to support their research and development activity, as well as dedicated mentorship. Together, the cohort reflects a range of disciplinary perspectives, engaging with questions that sit at the intersection of technology, culture, governance and everyday life. Each fellow approaches technology not as a finished product, but as an unsettled terrain whose assumptions, limits and possibilities need to be redrawn.
Bettina Korek, CEO and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, said: "Serpentine Arts Technologies explores the role of technology through research, experimentation and collaboration, supporting artists to develop new forms of practice while bringing together thinkers, practitioners, policymakers and academics to imagine future possibilities. Rooted in an evolving R&D framework, this fellowship creates space for innovation, pragmatic interventions and new ways of thinking about the relationship between technology, society and culture. It reflects Serpentine’s wider approach to working with artists, from research and development, through exhibition, and now into new formats, contexts and audiences. We congratulate the artists and deeply thank the jurors for their commitment and look forward to developing this work together.”
Suneil Setiya, Chair, Glass Castle said: "Glass Castle is delighted to be able to support Serpentine to extend its groundbreaking FAE programme and to enable extraordinary artists to R&D new work with expert support over the next three years and explore the frontiers of how we are living together. The global response demonstrates how urgent these artistic enquiries are. We can't wait to see what emerges."
Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Readiness Officer, Google DeepMind, said: “This Fellowship cohort reminds us that artistic inquiry is not a purely speculative pursuit, but a vital tool for building public agency and keeping us anchored in our values. By confronting the human dimensions of advanced systems, these artists are helping lay the bedrock for a technological future we can all be proud of. I am immensely grateful to the Serpentine team for the opportunity to partner on this process, and I look forward with great excitement to seeing how these four exceptional fellows help us co-imagine the future."
As debates about technologies such as artificial intelligence narrow to questions of capability, safety and market share, a more fundamental question needs to be asked: who gets to imagine what living with these technologies should feel like?
Delivered in a low-residency hybrid format, the fellowship combines online sessions, tailored mentorship through specialist seminars and workshops, and in-person intensives in London.
As a cultural institution committed to fostering new connections between art and audiences, over the last decade Serpentine has not only supported pioneering art and technology artists such as Refik Anadol, Cao Fei and Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, but also paved new and unique paths for art to influence policy and technology development. Since 2019, Serpentine’s Future Art Ecosystems programme has served as an innovation hub dedicated to culture, technology and society, publishing research and supporting experiments in blockchain, AI and game technologies. The fellowship marks a significant new strand of this work, complementing Future Art Ecosystems' research, publications, commissions and cross-sector collaborations.
Reflecting the fellowship's conviction that AI's future will be shaped across sectors, the honorary jury brought together artists working at the frontier of AI, leaders from within the technology industry, and thinkers on innovation, economics and institutional change. The jury comprised Refik Anadol, artist; Cao Fei, artist; Holly Herndon, artist; Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Readiness Officer, Google DeepMind; Mariana Mazzucato, author and economist; Venkatesh Rao, writer and consultant; Suneil Setiya, Chair, Glass Castle; and Evan Spiegel, Co-Founder and CEO, Snap Inc, joined by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine; Bettina Korek, CEO, Serpentine; and the Future Art Ecosystems team, Tommie Introna, Tsige Tafesse and Victoria Ivanova.
Notes to Editors
Alfredo Salazar-Caro (Mexico City, Mexico) is an artist, creator and worldbuilder working across installation, XR, social sculpture and biocompatible architecture. He is co-creator and Creative Director of DiMoDA (The Digital Museum of Digital Art), a pioneering VR institution founded in 2015. His work has been exhibited at the Tribeca Festival, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Salazar-Caro's fellowship research explores how emerging technologies and ancestral knowledge systems might converge to create post-digital architectures that rethink dwelling, ecological stewardship and regenerative futures. Through computational design, XR and robotic earth construction, he investigates how Indigenous knowledge and vernacular building traditions can inform hybrid physical and virtual environments. Bringing together robotic construction, immersive technologies and longstanding ecological practices, the project considers how artistic experimentation, cultural continuity and regenerative worldbuilding can coexist.
Alice Bucknell (Los Angeles, United States) is an artist, writer and educator whose work explores video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relationships and forms of knowledge. Their work has been presented at Centre Pompidou, Paris; the V&A, London; Biennale Gherdëina, Italy; Counterpublic Triennial, St Louis; and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung. Bucknell is currently a Visiting Professor at UC Davis.
For the fellowship, Bucknell will develop Medium Sized World, a research project investigating world models: AI systems that simulate environments and predict future outcomes. These systems have applications ranging from robotics and climate forecasting to video games. Through trusted tester access to commercially available systems, the project examines the assumptions, omissions and value systems embedded within them. Combining technical research with science and technology studies and philosophies of AI, Bucknell explores alternative approaches to world simulation that are collaborative, multiscalar and open-ended. The research will inform a new multiplayer video game currently in development.
Auriea Harvey (Rome, Italy) is a pioneering digital artist and sculptor whose three-decade practice spans net.art, video games and physical fabrication. Working at the intersection of sculptural traditions and computational processes, she treats the polygon mesh as a material in its own right, moving figures between physical and digital forms. Her work has been exhibited at arebyte, London; HEK, Basel; and the Museum of the Moving Image, New York.
Harvey's fellowship research explores what happens to the figure when it exists in a permanent state of becoming: authored through digital craft and AI systems, transmitted across borders as a file, and realised differently according to the conditions of each place it reaches. A figure created in Rome may remain digital, be physically fabricated elsewhere, or exist as a hybrid of both. By tracing how forms shift across materials, technologies and contexts, the project examines broader questions of craft, authorship and artistic agency in an era of increasingly distributed and algorithmic production.
Reina Mun (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States) is a doctoral researcher at Harvard whose work focuses on multimodal closed-loop control for ambient intelligence systems. Trained in architecture, she is interested in how people understand, direct and come to rely on emerging intelligent technologies. She has previously worked at Microsoft and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Mun's fellowship research examines one of AI's central promises: enhancement. As generative and agentic AI systems increasingly shape everyday life, her project asks what enhancement means, who defines it and how its effects can be meaningfully evaluated. Focusing on wellbeing, creativity and productivity, Mun will explore how intelligent systems can be designed, assessed and governed with humans actively in the loop. The research pays particular attention to the gap between perceived benefits and measurable outcomes.
About the Jury
Refik Anadol, Artist
Cao Fei, Artist
Holly Herndon, Artist
Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Readiness Officer, Google DeepMind
Mariana Mazzucato, Author & Economist
Venkatesh Rao, Writer & Consultant
Suneil Setiya, Chair, Glass Castle
Evan Spiegel, Co-Founder & CEO Snap Inc
About Serpentine
Building new connections between artists and audiences, Serpentine presents pioneering contemporary art exhibitions and cultural events with a legacy that stretches back over half a century, from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists, writers, scientists, thinkers, and cultural thought leaders of our time.
Based in London's Kensington Gardens, Serpentine features a year-round, free programme of exhibitions, architectural showcases, education, live events and technological activations across two sites, Serpentine North and Serpentine South, in the park and beyond the gallery walls.
Public art has emerged as a central strand of Serpentine's programme. Major presentations include a collection of Eduardo Paolozzi's sculptures (1987); Anish Kapoor's Turning the World Upside Down (2010); Lee Ufan's Relatum – Stage (2018–19); Christo and Jeanne-Claude's London Mastaba in the Serpentine Lake (2018); I LOVE YOU EARTH by Yoko Ono (2021); Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's In remembrance of the coming alien (Alienor) (2022); Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Pathmaker (2022–24); Atta Kwami's DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace) (2021–22); Gerhard Richter's STRIP-TOWER (2024); Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkin at the Round Pond (2024); Esther Mahlangu's mural Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (2024) and Giuseppe Penone's Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree) (2012) and Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) (2010–2024) (2025); and David Hockney’s A Year in Normandie, 2026. Pénétrable BBL Jaune (1999; 2023 Edition), a public art installation by artist Jesús Rafael SOTO is on view at Serpentine South until 25 October 2026.
Proud to maintain free access for all visitors, Serpentine also reaches an exceptionally broad audience and maintains a profound connection with its local community.
About Serpentine Arts Technologies
Serpentine's Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies and convenes people working in art, technology, law, policy, and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society.
The launch of Future Art Ecosystems in 2019 saw the undertaking of a more proactive role in shaping this ecosystem through sharing insights in annual strategic briefings and becoming a platform for a growing community of artists, technologists, policymakers, researchers and fellow organisations to experiment with new infrastructures.
https://futureartecosystems.org/
The Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship is supported through a three-year partnership with Glass Castle, whose support also enables broader artistic, research and convening activity across Serpentine.
processing… an open-access archive display, sharing the experimental methodologies and creative research and development (R&D) that has shaped its pioneering work at the intersection of art and advanced technologies remains on view in the Education Space, Serpentine South, until 6 September 2026.
About Glass Castle
Glass Castle is a philanthropic organisation that exists to enable the extraordinary, providing catalytic, long-term support for the artists and audiences of the future. We are committed to creating the conditions for extraordinary artists to thrive and experiment freely, and to empowering the infrastructure needed to realise new work that challenges, inspires, and connects us all. We will do this through innovative grantmaking and partnerships, residencies, presentation spaces and digital engagement. The foundation is bringing Wapping Hydraulic Power Station back to life as a destination for experimental arts and developing a new artist residency programme in the South Downs National Park.
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