Dr. Robert Twomey

About Robert

Ph.D., University of Washington 
MFA, University of California, San Diego
BS, Yale University

Robert Twomey is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the poetic intersection of human and machine. Trained as a painter and engineer, he integrates traditional forms with advanced technologies to create hybrid interactive artworks. He has created a computer simulation of a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease, a body of work exploring the fantasy of an imaginary daughter, and a recreation of John Seattle’s Chinese Room as a translation between synthetic child voice and robotic child drawing.

His dissertation project, “A Machine for Living In,” uses newly available computational and sensing tools to study the home as a site of intimate life. The title invokes Le Corbusier’s modernist framing of the house as a machine to interpret the promise of contemporary smart home technologies.

Twomey has worked in a range of research centers throughout his career, notably the Center for the Study of Learning, the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, and the Experimental Design Lab with Natalie Jeremijenko. He has used neuroimaging to explore the basis of reading and language perception, built pollution-hunting Feral Robotic Dogs, created experimental game interfaces and 4K stereo animation.

Twomey received his BS from Yale University with majors in Art and Biomedical Engineering, his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego, and his PhD in Digital Arts and Experimental Media from the University of Washington. He has presented his work in the US and abroad.