The Uncanny Avatar / Chart

The Avatar of the Uncanny Valley was a project in which I applied a term from robotics to an examination of virtual worlds avatars; and whether the levels of identification and empathy between human handler and avatar might become affected
by visual transformations of the virtual part of the equation.

The graph above shows a juxtaposition of Masahiro Mori's famous Uncanny Valley diagram with my own experimentations,
involving my avatar Alpha, in order to test Mori's theorem within a non-robotic context. 
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The Avatar of the Uncanny Valley / Video

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The Uncanny Valley

 

 Masahiro Mori’s graph of the Uncanny Valley

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"The abject is not an object facing me, which I name or imagine. Nor is it an object, an otherness ceaselessly fleeing in a systematic quest of desire. What is abject is not my correlative, which, providing me with someone or something else as support, would allow me to be more or less detached and autonomous. The abject has only one quality of the object – that of being opposed to the ‘I.’" (Kristeva 1982)

The concept of the Uncanny Valley that was introduced by Masahiro Mori into the field of robotics in 1970 deals with just such a conundrum: How do we react when we encounter beings whose embodiment is very similar to that of our own – and yet they are possessed of a not-quite-thereness that in its most extreme states may raise an unsettling closeness to things such as corpses or zombies? Is this a state that is too close for comfort? And when we are confronted with it do not we feel a deep rooted abjection toward this ‘thing’ that may be perceived as “not an object facing me, which I name or imagine” (1982); in other words, not as an object that has a clearly marked ‘otherness’ to the extent where I can successfully externalize it.

Mori’s hypothesis is linked to Ernst Jentsch’s concept of ‘The Uncanny’; identified in his 1906 article, ‘On the Psychology of the Uncanny’; which later also inspired Sigmund Freud to write his famed 1919 essay, ‘The Uncanny’; the latter being a discourse on the aesthetics evoked through such a state. Jentsch relays to us that a perception of the uncanny results from “an intellectual uncertainty,” relating it to occurrences such as those that would engender “doubts as to whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate.” (Jentsch, 1906: 203 – 205)

Freud elaborates on the uncanny with the aid of a lexical survey that seeks out the etymological connections between the German words Unheimlich (Uncanny) and Heimlich (homely or secret). Through the double meaning of the latter word he demonstrates that the concepts might be far more closely connected to one another than would have been initially anticipated: “It may be true that the uncanny (unheimlich) is something which is secretly familiar (heimlich), which has undergone repression and then returned from it.” (Freud, 1919) Freud places the repressions in two areas of the subconscious: The part of our selves that underneath a thin veneer of enlightened civilization is still very closely bound to the primordial/atavistic and secondly in the part that is in the realm of infant sexuality. One of the most valuable observations that Freud makes on the subject however, is related not directly to the uncanny entity itself but to the context within which it is actually encountered. Thus he points out that entities that are not perceived as even remotely uncanny in fairy tales, acquire ominous significations when encountered in a setting of literary works that place their subject matter within realistic settings into which the same or very similar uncanny elements are inserted.

Mori’s findings established that as a robot becomes more human-like, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic – until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of a strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and the motion of the robot continue to become even less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

Thus, the curve of Mori’s famous graph of the Uncanny Valley does not follow a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is the formation of a smooth peak as the resemblance of the robotic agent moves increasingly towards humanness; however this peak is immediately followed by a deep chasm that plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where the resemblance to humanness is complete. Mori called this area of repulsion aroused by a robot situated between the ‘barely-human’ and the ‘fully human’ the ‘Uncanny Valley,’ representing the dip in the graph at which the observer sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to be eerie or disquieting. The preceding peak, however, is where the perception is of an entity, human enough to arouse some level of empathy, while yet remaining clearly non-human enough to avoid a sense of confusion and wrongness.

Uncanny Alpha

'The Avatar of the Uncanny Valley' is a project that engrossed me for one month in Spring 2008, after the idea to use Mori’s concept for a process based art work (in which I would observe, document and write upon the changes that came about through changing the appearance of my avatar Alpha) took hold.

At this point I had been a resident of Second Life for just over a year but had already become a competent builder, and my creative activities in the metaverse were almost exclusively grounded in externalized building. Although I had been much preoccupied with my relationship with Alpha, I had yet to embark upon manipulating the avatar as an artifact, most likely because I was simply too wrapped up in my virtual persona to consider it as an entity that could be worked with/upon in such a manner, that an extension of my ‘self’ held the potential to become an art work in its own right.

That said, I was already aware that Alpha held a strange dichotomy, one begging for further investigation, embedded within her very being: She was both ‘me’ and yet ‘not me’ – and furthermore she was the only one occupying this overpowering role at that time since I did not yet have alt avatars through which I could have shifted my attention away from her.

Throughout this time, as my sole extension in the metaverse, Alpha’s appearance was as identical to my own as I could possibly get her to be: Although she was younger than me, nonetheless she looked like me, she most certainly dressed like me, usually clad in black jeans, hiking boots and a black tshirt as I also often appear in Real Life – albeit with minor modifications such as having grown a neko tail and ears at some point of our joint life. These however, were no major deviations from ‘me,’ given my life-long association and deep empathy with cats.

That I had accomplished the transition to the full identification between human and avatar through Alpha’s presence and appearance is obvious in retrospect. The fact that Alpha was such a close replication of my physical self probably intensified the transition as well. It is said that such an appearance is preferred because of its tendency to bring about a close identification between the player and the virtual extension of his/her ‘self,’ easing the transition into full identification between avatar and human.

Alpha does not deviate from this pattern and is hence a look-alike avatar. Since there appeared to be significant bonding and identification as a result of this resemblance between us, the assignment which I gave myself was to investigate the limits of this bonding through the creation of a series of appearances who would still look like me but be differentiated enough to appear to be non-human and/or off kilter enough to evoke a negative response that might potentially result in the loosening of the bond. I also have to say at this juncture that given the strength of the bond between us, this was not an easy decision. If anything it felt like stepping off a mental precipice to embark upon the project.

Reading Kristeva’s text as a literary masterpiece, and applying a regimen of transformation in which, at the point when Mori’s graph took the dip, ‘I’ would become a personification of revulsion and horror to ‘myself,’ are two different mindsets altogether.

This is not something to be contemplated lightheartedly, and I most certainly did not do so either.

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Representations that fall into the Uncanny Valley would not necessarily have to be mechanoid - or at least that is what I would imagine. Something which is humanoid yet clearly non-human, should also qualify. It would however have to have negative subconscious associations, such as a succubus surely must have. I am reading up on my Freud to see if I can find any substantiation for this claim in what he has to say upon the subject of the Uncanny.

This one has ended up becoming more ominous, although for some strange reason I find the all white smoke succubus more unsettling. But, one way or another, although I enjoy taking these photos, I am feeling very alienated from Alpha as I do it. For the first time since I met her she is no longer an extension of my persona - I can not relate to her or to how she looks. AT ALL!

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Nonetheless, my fascination outweighed my misgivings and over the course of the next month Alpha metamorphosed into a series of personalities that ranged from mythological creatures such as a siren and two succubuses to a steampunk queen of extreme adornment and beauty; and from various mechanoid, or semi-android/mechanoid beings to a decomposing/dead body.

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I add the clockwork skin to the steampunk arms and legs and remove the hair and ears. Now, I think, Alpha is closer to the Valley. There definitely has to be something to this theory: I do not feel good subjecting Alpha to all of this and the subtle shifts from human to only peripherally human make me feel decidedly uncomfortable.
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 So, these avatars are well differentiated into being non-human. As such they would have to fall outside the Valley threshold.
But do they I wonder?
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I documented the various uncanny incarnations of Alpha through photographs and I also kept an emotional response log, part of which was published online as photo captions that accompanied the photographs on Flickr.

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 In the very depth of the valley: 

This is truly horrifiying. I had a really hard time doing this...

I saw the Cyborg skin on space ship designer Ichtyo Broome, but seeing it on someone else is not quite the same as putting it on yourself. I did have a sense that clothing Alpha in this skin would be a very difficult thing to do and it took me a really long time to even decide to go out and purchase the skin. But finally I did it yesterday. The bones are the bones of the whale avatar of Flea Bussy.

So, this is the end of the road for now: I have raked this as deep as I think can go at the moment without totally cracking up over it. One of my favorite writers is Mishima and what I think of as one of his best books is entitled "The Decay of the Angel". And that is what should probably be the title of these. 

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The documentation of the project consists of a set of 148 images on Flickr, which are only a selection that I made from a much bigger collection that is located on my hard drive, and a video compiled of these images that follows the transition from canny to uncanny to solace.