Hello, creative humans. For May’s talk, we’re bringing you Robert Twomey, an an artist exploring the intersection of machine perception and human desire. His projects have taken the form of an interactive simulation of a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease, a body of work exploring the fantasy of an imaginary daughter, and a recreation of John Searle’s Chinese Room as a transaction between synthetic child voice and robotic child drawing. Tickets for his talk at the Seattle Art Museum are waitlisted right now, but we’re working on getting some more released soon!
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How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
I identify two kinds of creativity in my work. One has to do with creativity as problem solving or invention. I use this part in all of the mechatronics, computer programming, and fabrication that I do. The other side of creativity for me has to do with expression and the drive to get things out there into the world and communicate. The “problem to be solved” becomes how to take some subject of interest or inkling of a desire and develop it into a concrete form. This is a real challenge. It involves paying attention to yourself, figuring out what you are really trying to do, and why. Both kinds of creativity have been a part of me as long as I can remember. Growing up I was always building inventions, taking things apart, and I loved to draw. I got a lot of positive feedback and encouragement for these activities, which I’m sure went a long way in pushing me towards a creative profession.
Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
I look for inspiration in books, art works, life around me. But really I find the best inspiration in my peers. I’m finishing up a graduate program now (DXARTS at UW) and have had a number of excellent, really inspiring models in the students and faculty here. It is very nourishing to be surrounded by peers doing similar kinds of work but with totally different approaches, skills, history. We learn a ton from each other. This community provides a lot of fuel for my own practice.
What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
I wish I had known there was some kind of art and technology hybrid in my future. I spent a lot of years of my life thinking science/engineering was one thing over here, and art was another thing over there (painting and drawing, usually). This is really a conservative, discipline-bound dichotomy. It has been exciting to watch these pursuits begin to merge in my career, to meet somewhere in the middle. I’m in a place where I get to engage both kinds of thinking on a regular basis in making projects. I wouldn’t have expected that starting out.
Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Living or dead, I’d pick Walt Whitman. In a fish-out-of-water way, I’m curious what he would make of our contemporary scene. He had an interest in labor, industry, productivity as part of the national character in his time. I think that intersects with this month’s topic of robots, technology, and ideas of human/machine production. He is a model for a lot of what I admire—a boundless enthusiasm, a desire to connect with the world around him and chronicle it. He’s very earthy. I love the 1st edition of Leaves of Grass, which he typeset and published himself.
What are you reading these days?
I just finished Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It was a great book, the inspiration for the film Stalker. I think I’m going to read some more books by them. I’m also very very slowly making my way through Kenzaburo Oe’s Somersault. I love some of his other books but am having a hard time with this one. And I am revisiting Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, in reference to a project I’m doing with Mike McCrea for Black Box 2.0.
What practices, rituals or habits contribute to your creative work?
I get up every morning, head to the basement or studio, and start first thing. This is funny for me. It represents a real shift from a more end-of-day/evening mode of work earlier in my career to very much early morning work now. The most important thing for me is finding a time and place to concentrate, where I won’t be interrupted, and I can really get into things. So early mornings it is! I get a lot done before 10am.
