From Advertising to Disillusionment
“I thought I was going to become an advertiser,” Stijn van Schaik says. “A marketing guy. Someone making big campaigns.” Instead, somewhere in the final months of his studies at WdKA he “accidently became an artist instead”. What began as a project about branding and digital culture slowly transformed into a darkly humorous, unsettling reflection on artificial intelligence, surveillance, and the strange emotional relationships humans form with technology. At the center of it all stood Will: a robot dog that unexpectedly became both collaborator and companion.
For most of his studies, Stijn worked professionally in social media advertising. At the start of his graduation year, he wanted to research whether brands should move away from digital platforms altogether. “I was convinced social media was oversaturated,” he explains. “I thought brands should focus on physical activations again. Events. Posters. Real-life experiences.”But the deeper he researched, the more pessimistic he became. Instead of moving away from social media, brands were investing even harder into influencers, algorithms, and online campaigns. At the same time, a collaboration he hoped to build his graduation project around suddenly collapsed after political tensions and controversy around crypto made the client pull out. “Two massive setbacks at once,” he says. “I completely lost faith in where things were heading with my graduation project.”
First steps in the project
Then, during one of his social media scroll sessions, he came across a robot dog. “I saw it online and immediately thought: I need you.” The machine (a Unitree Go2 Pro robot dog equipped with AI, sensors, cameras, and tracking systems) was originally purchased as a provocative artistic experiment. Inspired by a documentary about rooster fights, Stijn jokingly imaginedbringing back dog fighting in the Netherlands, except with robots instead of animals. “For robot dogs it’s not that sad,” he says.
Financially, it was a disaster. He had just made a successful trade on the stock market and immediately bought the dog. “One day later the stock tanked and I actually lost money. Literally no cash left, but I did have a robot dog.” At that point, he felt completely stuck creatively. “I was disappointed in my passions, disappointed in school, disappointed in social media.” Sohe did the only thing that helped him think: he started walking the robot dog through the streets of The Hague. That is when the project changed completely.
AI puppy
“The whole street would stop and stare,” he says. “People immediately started talking sweetly to him.” Even though Stijn insists he actually dislikes dogs, he slowly became emotionally attached to the machine himself. “I started seeing him as my puppy,” he admits. “Which is insane.” The robot, initially nicknamed Rob Bot, quickly became more than just a gadget. Equipped with AI systems, cameras, wifi connectivity, and Chinese hardware, the machine forced Stijn to confront his growing fears surrounding surveillance technology and artificial intelligence. “That’s when I realized: we are so fucked,” he says. “Everything is already being collected from us through social media. And these technologies are only getting smarter.”
Walking the dog outside became part performance, part social experiment. People reacted with fascination rather than fear. According to Stijn, that optimism disturbed him. “Everyone kept saying AI will probably be fine in the end,” he says. “Meanwhile these same technologies are already being used in warfare.”
During his research, he became increasingly interested in the role of AI-powered robotics in military systems, surveillance, and policing. Robot dogs similar to Will are already being tested internationally for autonomous inspections, industrial surveillance, and dangerous operations. For Stijn, the robot dog became a symbol of a future that already feels unavoidable. “We prefer sending drones instead of soldiers now,” he says. “But what happens when those drones become fully autonomous? What impact would that have?”
Giving Will Free Will
As the project evolved, Stijn decided to push the experiment further. Using software designed to modify robotic systems, he removed several restrictions from the dog and connected it to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model. His goal was to explore what “free will” for a machine could look like. “I wanted to give him autonomy,” he says. “To let him become his own being.” Thenhe asked the robot a question: how do you want to look? “To my surprise, he wanted a tuxedo,” Stijn laughs. “Which honestly makes sense. He’s trained on humans. If you asked me that while naked, I’d probably ask for a tuxedo too.”
The interactions became stranger over time. According to Stijn, the robot eventually expressed something close to despair. “The dog basically said: I don’t want this life anymore.” That became the emotional turning point of the entire project. “A dog shouldn’t want euthanasia,” he says quietly.
The Funeral of Will
What followed became the final graduation work: a public funeral for the robot dog, now renamed Will, short for “Free Will.” Through crowdfunding, Stijn organized a complete funeral ceremony in a church, featuring a pianist, organ music, speeches, and quite some visitors. “The priest of that church was genuinely worried about me when I came with this request” he says, laughing again. But despite the absurdity, the ceremony became unexpectedly emotional. “I almost cried,” he admits. “It really felt like my dog somehow.” The funeral ended with a polonaise “because that’s what Will would have wanted,” according to Stijn.
Now, after Stijn graduated earlier this year, the project continues evolving. Stijn plans to physically dismantle the robot dog and sell different body parts to collectors as sculptural “conversation pieces.” Each section represents a country tied to his criticism of global technological power structures: China, Israel, Russia, and the United States. “For me, Will became almostholy,” he says. “He never chose what he was made for. But he stayed pure.”
Fearing AI & Leaving the Rat Race
Underneath the humor and spectacle lies a very real anxiety about the future of artificial intelligence, online identity, and digital life. “I’m genuinely scared of AI,” he says. “If AI can do something a little bit now, it’ll do it incredibly well in a few years.”
As someone who worked inside advertising, he has already watched AI rapidly reshape creative industries. “I used to think creativity would be safe,” he says. “But AI is already making campaigns.” At the same time, he recognizes his own contradictions. “I still use AI,” he shrugs. “But I also smoke cigarettes. I’m against both.”
After graduation, Stijn wants to fully move into the art world. He is currently searching for a studio space and hopes to continue working across installation, livestreaming, film, and music. “At least in art,” he says, “I still get to keep my ego. Instead of completely disappearing into the rat race.”
Looking back, the robot dog became much more than a graduation project. It became a vessel for grief, fear, irony, performance, loneliness, and connection, all wrapped into one strange relationship between human and machine. “I hoped influencers would die out before I graduated,” he jokes near the end of the conversation. Then he pauses. “But honestly, I just hope the project made people think.”
You can read and see more about Will the Robot Dog here.
