“Uncanny Valley is a term used to describe that uneasy feeling when you recognise a humanoid is lifelike, but you are emotionally unsettled by a sense of artificiality in its portrayal of humanity. What is it that is absent?”
During February, a “conference” took place in the Battersea Arts Centre there was a robot with the features of the author Thomas Melle, this identical robot gives the conference instead.
It talks about artificial intelligence and technology. Extremely thought provoking lecture, and a brilliant idea.
I lacked empathy towards the speaker, which was actually a robot made to look like Thomas Melle. The reason I say this is because I did not feel bad when walking into the auditorium late, as I usually would when I’m late to a lecture or live performance and the presenter/performer witnesses my late arrival. The way the robot looked, its movements as well as speech resembled a human but there was a surreal feeling about it, knowing it was not human.
During the talk there are moments where it feels like it’s almost human or you get distracted for a second, but it never really convinces you and leaves you in this uncanny valley.
This reminded me of what Mark mentioned in his class about lecture performance and performance as research, where the presentation is the piece of art
He used the example of Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Coco Cusco.