I’m happy to say that I received an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Credits for Research Grant to support my digital arts research! The grant supports proof of concept research to employ the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as a platform for my machine listening, structure from motion, and computational photography work as part of the Rover project.
I am running a series of hands-on workshops in 2016-17 to introduce students, faculty, and staff to 3D printing and rapid prototyping technologies. These classes will familiarize the YSU community with current trends and possibilities in digital manufacturing, introduce the significant 3D printing resources and research on campus, and provide participants direct experience with printing tools. Finally, these workshops aim to raise the visibility of YSU 3D printing research, and contribute to a community of interest around the technology.
Collaboration with Dana Sperry on one segment of the Exquisite Donut project.
I’m happy to say I have joined the faculty at Youngstown State University. I’m an Assistant Professor of Digital Media, in the Department of Art. I look forward to great things from YSU!
The Stranger recommends my show at 4Culture:
One of Robert Twomey’s first experiments in computer art was when he trained a chatbot to converse with him as if the bot were his grandmother, whose dementia was deepening at the time. He pursued a relationship with his computer as if the computer were a loved one. Twomey is always interested in the personal human connection to technology. In this current room-sized installation, The Serious Business of Children, he has built drawing, recording, and speaking machines that continue his hand translations of found children’s drawings by mechanical means, and through words the children themselves wouldn’t have known. What does a computer see in a child’s drawing? JEN GRAVES
My new project, The Serious Business of Children is showing at Gallery 4Culture for October 2015.
Robert Twomey’s room-scale mechatronic installation, The Serious Business of Children, examines issues of meaning and expression from the oblique angle of children’s pre-language. Twomey populates his room with a number of speaking, listening, and drawing machines that communicate with one another using synthesized voices and drawings in a process of continuous translation from word to image. Audio recordings and children’s drawings are the raw material of the system. They are analyzed by computer and re-synthesized by machines. The project uses children’s early expressions as protolanguage, unintelligible in any conventional sense, but communicative in other registers.
Robert Twomey’s project was inspired by the notable American philosopher John Rogers Searle. Searle, whose expertise was in the philosophy of language, developed the “Chinese room” argument to challenge the popular idea called “strong” artificial intelligence, that it’s possible for a computer running a program to have a “mind” or “consciousness” (think Hal in 2001).
Joe Milutis discusses my project Searle’s Room in his column on experimental translation, Bright Arrogance, in Jacket2.
Please follow the link below to see what he has to say:
My work was featured on the Microsoft news center and Instagram channel.
Artist Robert Twomey explores the intersection of humans and machines
instagram:
I’m giving at talk at Creative Mornings Seattle on Friday, May 8th at the Seattle Art Museum. The theme is Robots.
Details on the Creative Mornings Website:
http://creativemornings.com/talks/robert-twomey
Mike McCrea and I will present our new work Rover at Black Box 2.0. We will be located in the 20′ shipping container in front of SIFF from May 28 – June 7.
Hope to see you there!
