We are thrilled to perform DOG WALK, a new episode from our BFF project as the season opening event for the Qualcomm Institute’s Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS).
Date: January 29, 2026
Time: 5pm – 7pm
Location: Atkinson Hall – CALIT2 Theater
BFF: A Dog Walk is an interactive walk and talk with two robot dogs through a guided landscape examining the nature of LLMs, AI alignment problems, and frontiers of machine intimacy. Read more here.
About IDEAS
The Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences aims to encourage interdisciplinary performing, visual, and literary-artists, as well as engineers and scientists, to take advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s advanced audio-visual facilities, services and personnel in staging performances and presentations of new and experimental works and research.
Visit ideas.ucsd.edu for more information about the IDEAS program.
Note: This performance involves a short walking excursion along paved and grassy lawns in the near vicinity of campus. Please use your discretion regarding personal mobility and comfort. For your safety, we kindly ask that you maintain a respectful distance of 6 feet from the robotic guides to allow for their sensing, navigation, and mutual autonomy.
About the Artists
Jesse Reding Fleming is an internationally exhibited artist and immersive technology designer working at the intersection of contemplative science, emerging technology, and embodied experience. He is the founder and director of The Awareness Lab (awarenesslab.io), an independent creative research studio producing experiential artworks, experimental systems, and applied design frameworks across cultural, research, and real-world contexts. His work explores how designed encounters can transform perception and relational awareness, and he collaborates with partners across the academic and private sector on technologies for well-being.
jessefleming.com/ and awarenesslab.io/
Robert Twomey is an artist and engineer exploring poetic intersections of human and machine perception, particularly how emerging technologies transform sites of intimate life. He has presented his work at SIGGRAPH (Best Paper Award), CVPR, ISEA, NeurIPS, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the California Arts Council, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and NVIDIA. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Computing in the Arts and an Artist-in-Residence with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego, where he directs the Machine Cohabitation Lab.
roberttwomey.com and cohab-lab.net