Article on Uncanny

While searching for things that were uncanny I came across this image which really struck me. Despite obviously how the man looks there is something I find strangely beautiful or maybe compelling about this piece as there's so much detail that's been put into it and it looks so realistic.

















“When we die, we fall into the trough of the uncanny valley. Our body becomes cold, our color changes, and movement ceases.” Human models fall into the uncanny valley because they remind us of death. “It may be important to our self-preservation,” he concludes. - Masahiro Mori (Japanese Roboticist) 

- I find this an interesting way of describing why people have a weird or uncanny feeling around models because they are lifeless, stiff and have no warmth which reminds us of what people are like when they die and that's why we're a bit dubious and unsure of them. Also the model above is also depicting a dead person which I guess makes it even weirder or more uncanny because it is so realistic.



The paragraphs below explain why we avoid things to do with death and why we have an inbuilt instinct almost to be squeamish about death. Mori basically states that things that look like humans, for example models, make people want to stay away from them because they look sick and we as humans want to avoid anything that looks ill because we want to live as full and healthy lives as possible. Ghazanfar thinks there's a more simpler explanation and that's we've evolved to be able to recognise our own kind or species innately or instinctively so we know who we can interact with and it's the same for the animal world. I also think it's about safety as well because we all know who/what we can safely interact with and if something doesn't look right at first we are cautious about it which helps to protect us.

'But all along Mori hasn’t seen our avoidance of death as a consequence of repressed emotions the way Freud did. Instead he has understood it to be a mechanism we developed to keep ourselves safe. Nearly every hypothesis since has had this flavor. It has been suggested, for instance, that we avoid almost human figures because their peculiarities make them look sick, and we have developed an evolutionary mechanism for steering clear of pathogens. Another theory posits that we avoid figures with features slightly off from our own because they appear to be less-than-ideal mating material.'

'Ghazanfar rejects all of these hypotheses. “What is really going on is much simpler,” he says. He believes the uncanny valley response occurs because an animal—human or nonhuman—is evolutionarily inclined to develop an expectation of what members of its species should look like, a supremely important skill, as it lets the animal know with whom it can and cannot interact.'

Source:

Seed Magazine [Internet] http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/uncanny_valley/P1/ and http://drmstream.com/2009/11/more-on-the-uncanny-valley/ - Accessed 26/2/2013