LONDON.- Serpentine announced 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.
