In an upcoming video performance premiere, UC San Diego doctoral students Mingyong Chen and Sophia Sun present “Learning to move, learning to play, learning to animate” with the Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS series.

“Learning to move, learning to play, learning to animate” is a cross-disciplinary multimedia performance piece that challenges a human-centric perspective and aims to offer a new way of experiencing the world. Inspired by the concept of “the-more-than-human-world” and its conceptual connection to shadow art, this performance features a robot performer constructed from natural materials that learns to interact and perceive the world. 

Along with the robot’s movements and playfulness, the piece highlights its ever-transforming shadows with visual and computational processing. The work invites the audience to explore the unseen connections and interactions that exist between all living beings and the environment we inhabit, and contemplate how we can coexist with nature and technology without overpowering one another.

The video performance will premiere online soon.

About the IDEAS Program

The Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) program 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. To learn more and to access a list of upcoming IDEAS performances for the 2024 season, visit https://ideas.ucsd.edu/.