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!
Category Archives: News
The Stranger Recommends: Serious Business
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
The Serious Business of Children @ Gallery 4Culture
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).
Searle’s Room as Experimental Translation
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:
Work Featured @ Microsoft
My work was featured on the Microsoft news center and Instagram channel.
Artist Robert Twomey explores the intersection of humans and machines
instagram:
Creative Mornings Talk @ Seattle Art Museum
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
Rover @ BlackBox 2.0, with Mike McCrea
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!
ArtsBreak @ the Henry Art Gallery
ArtBreak: Robert Twomey
Saturday, March 7, 2:30 — 3 PM
Artist and UW Ph.D. candidate in DXARTS, Robert Twomey, will be exploring questions on interactive artwork and how art identity is achieved through installation and performance. Twomey has also been a vital part in creating the Field of Bullroarers in the common S E N S E. You don’t want to miss out!
http://blog.henryart.org/2015/03/02/the-week-ahead-henry-47/
Work Featured in the Stranger
My work was featured in What Only Artists Can Teach Us About Technology, Data, and Surveillance, a long piece in The Stranger by Jen Graves.
Ann Hamilton @ the Henry
I’ve built the control system for Ann Hamilton’s Bullroarer installation at the Henry Gallery. This piece, with 21 independent mechatronic sound makers, is installed in the main space of the Museum for her show, Ann Hamilton: the common S E N S E, opening October 11th 2014.