https://whitecubediaries.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/the-uncanny-where-psychology-meets-art/
- The uncanny, a Freudian term which describes an instance where something is simultaneously familiar and foreign, resulting in a feeling of discomfort.
- The idea of the uncanny was first identified by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny, where he defines the uncanny as being a product of “intellectual uncertainty.”
- In 1919 Sigmund Freud published his essay, The Uncanny, in which he elaborates on the uncanny through aesthetic investigations. Freud’s aesthetic investigations on this psychological phenomenon have intrigued artists since its publication; from the Surrealists to contemporary art, artists have tried to visually represent and fabricate objects which provoke an uncanny effect.
- Freud states in his essay that the uncanny lies in the realm of the frightening and evokes both fear and dread. Though the uncanny is not clearly definable, because it relies on a personal experience, Freud outlines circumstances that would be considered uncanny which are:
- animism, magic, sorcery, the omnipotence of thought, unintended repetition, the double or Doppelgänger, the castration complex, and instantaneous wish- fulfilment.
- Even though each of these categories may seem disparate, Freud connects them through the definition of the German word unheimlich, (the equivalent to the English word uncanny) which, “applies to everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open.”
- These categories of the uncanny are things that provoke a suppressed primordial fear within us when we unexpectedly encounter them, resulting in an intellectual uncertainty that causes a great sense of repulsion and distress.In 2004 artist Mike Kelley curated an exhibition, The Uncanny at the Tate Liverpool which explored, “memory, recollection, horror and anxiety through the juxtaposition of a highly personal collection of objects with realist figurative sculpture.” The works within the show indubitably provoke an uncanny effect within the viewer through the use of scale, materials, and color; they are at the same time distressing and repulsive as they are fascinating and alluring.
Robert Gober, Untitled, (1989-92)
Bruce Nauman, Rinde Head/Andrew Head (Plug to Nose) 1989
Dean Barrett, Tied Up (1983)
Ron Mueck, Ghost, (1998)
Bryan Crockett, Pinky, (2001) – marble
John Issacs, Untitled (Monkey) (1995)
Damien Hirst, The Prodigal Son, (1994)
A favourite example of mine is the work of Lauren Marsolier, whose montages create eerily composed images that illustrate the idea of the uncanny, her images being composed of real-life geographical places, but at the same time not existing in any one moment, time or location.
Photo-montages that piece together fragments from several different photographs from her personal library – taken over a period of years in a number of different locations – she composes landscapes that are simultaneously utterly strange and so familiar they leave you convinced you’ve seen them before
Located somewhere between fiction and reality, her images represent a mental landscape affected by a world of constant change. They show an unreality become manifest, transitional non-places where human action and inhabitation are recorded in strange antitheses of nature and artifice, or, better still, artificial nature and natural artifice.”
Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of aesthetics which holds that when features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some observers. Examples can be found in the fields of robotics and 3D computer animation, among others.
Hypothesis
Mori’s original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some observers’ emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot’s appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely human” and “fully human” entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly “strange” to some human beings, will produce a feeling of uncanniness, and will thus fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.
Chanel 4 ‘Humans’
The series explores the themes of artificial intelligence and robotics, focusing on the social, cultural, and psychological impact of the invention of anthropomorphic robots called “synths
Design principles
A number of design principles have been proposed for avoiding the uncanny valley:
- Design elements should match in human realism. A robot may look uncanny when human and nonhuman elements are mixed; its degree of human realism in appearance should also match its degree of human realism in behaviour – matching appearance and motion kinematics are important.
- Reducing conflict and uncertainty by matching appearance, behavior, and ability. In terms of performance, if a robot looks too appliance-like, people will expect little from it; if it looks too human, people will expect too much from it.
- Human facial proportions and photorealistic texture should only be used together. A photorealistic human texture demands human facial proportions, or the computer generated character can fall into the uncanny valley. Abnormal facial proportions, including those typically used by artists to enhance attractiveness (e.g., larger eyes), can look eerie with a photorealistic human texture. Avoiding a photorealistic texture can permit more leeway.
Mike Kelly