Non-life in the valley
The uncanny valley is a horrible place to live. No one will like you, you’re not quite human and you’re not quite an object… you’re an affront to taste, you’re repulsive.
Fortunately, it’s not a place any of us will ever find ourselves, being human, but for our ever-developing robots it is a real possibility. They are starting to get to that stage now – they look so like us, but still not quite right.
I was thinking, that whilst the uncanny valley theory is specifically directed at robotics, whether the same principles apply with traditional sculpture… for some reason I don’t think it does. I know that sculpture can be horrifying and repulsive, as art that’s part of it’s role, but often this is derived from how un-human it appears. Life-like models in sculpture tend to be praised for their beauty or even honesty, whereas with robots we see ugliness and dishonesty.
The graph suggests this has something to do with movement – human-like movement. Perhaps that’s why shops can safely install stationary life-like mannequins, but if they were to use ones that would wander around the shop we might all feel uneasy.
I’d look to Sigmund Freud for help with this, but he’s not much use. Aside from being a deceased drug addict, he also had a bit of a fetish… he had a love of sculpture… and not exactly a ‘pure’ love.
What Freud referred to as ‘The Fetish‘ (a condition he assumed that because he had it, every man had it) was a fascination with sculpture, brought on by noticing, he theorised, the lack of his mothers external genitalia. His attraction to sculpture being an attempt to replace that genitalia… all sculpture, Freud assumed, was a substitute phallus (his word, it it gives me the creeps).
Check out Freud’s desk:
That’s a lot of phallus for a desk.
Maybe it does help… If we view robots as sculpture – something we have created – albeit a very complex and mechanical one, then what is it that we see? Gigantic genitals with their own mind? I’d find that a little repulsive, but I’m not sure it’s right… Personally, I think what we see when we look at an immigrant from the uncanny valley is all that we are without humanity, something we seem to like let slip, and I think the repulsion is not directed towards the robot, but towards ourselves.
So, from now on, when I use the phrase, ‘don’t be a dummy’, it’s not a quiant way of slighting the recipients itellect, rather it’s a heart-felt plea, loaded with repulsion.
Ben on 
Ty on
The uncanny valley is disturbing because we see ourselves, but without that spark of life. We aren’t afraid of the dark, we’re afraid of what’s in it, and the most terrifying thing to meet in an alley is another human, not a ghost or a dog. The most terrifying monsters are the ones that look most like us, perhaps the most frightening thing is your own face staring back at you when you don’t expect it.
I really like Halloween.
Me too… after thinking about it for a while, I think you’re right too, that one of the worst things to be faced with down a dark alley would be a person (admitedly a ghost person/dog hybrid would probably tick all of the boxes too).
It also explains why the film, ‘The Bodysnatchers’ gives me the heebies.
I was at a party recently where a mannequin was set up sitting casually (if somewhat lewdly) on a couch in the attic. Every couple of minutes I was up there, I’d catch it out of the corner of my eye and get really creeped out, peripheral vision reading it as a person that I knew wasn’t there. Obviously when I looked straight at it, I went ‘oh. mannequin’ but looking at it from angles- those things that Hounds of Tindalos come through- it certainly fell into the valley.
On the other end of things, I have on occasion sat so perfectly still as to fool strangers into thinking I was some sort of sculpture or mannequin, eliciting a certain amount of panic when I finally did move. I of course found this quite amusing, particularly the time someone decided to use my shoulder as a hand rest.
ahh, the Hounds – the main reason I avoid time travelling.
That must take an amazing amount of self control, to sit there that still without fidgeting.
I have never heard of this phenomena but it certainly explains a whole lot. Years ago I was walking to a girlfriend’s house down their long driveway. They had fruit trees all along one side and had set up a mannequin in amongst them, which I had forgotten about. It was night time and for some reason I looked the other way from the fruit trees briefly before turning back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mannequin and my initial response I can now explain by this Uncanny Valley theory!
I was the most scared I’ve ever been. I didn’t faint, but I did go into shock for about ten minutes, unable to speak, look at anybody or do anything but cower on the floor, refusing to acknowledge the whole family shaking me and wondering what the hell was going on.
The sort of people that install a mannequin in amongst fruit trees scare me…
It does sound like you experienced a classic revulsion response.
I’ve never quite understood why triggering the ‘fight or flight’ response so often ends in cowering on the floor… surely evolution would have ironed that crease out by now.
Could be the massive adrenaline rush… if you do anything with it then it’ll help, but when you stop moving (or don’t fight/fly) you probably go into shock or something.
That or you’ve actually bypassed the fight or flight mechanism, overloaded what your brain can deal with and gone into full withdrawal mode (i.e. foetal position on the floor whilst making little whimpering noises)
“(i.e. foetal position on the floor whilst making little whimpering noises)”
Where I live, we call that the ‘Niall’…
niall was a friend of mine as a teenager. We once got into a fight with a bunch of older teenagers… before even a single punch was thrown, Niall slowly and carefully folded up into a ball on the pavement, assumed the foetal position and whimpered the phrase, ‘not the face’.
Residents of the Valley creep us out because we’re so good at recognising human features – normally we recognise anything non-human as being very clearly non-human and don’t expect it to act in a perfectly human-like way (e.g. cartoon characters really look nothing like people, we recognise the human-like patterns enough to be interested, but because they’re clearly non-human we overlook the fact that they have colossal eyes and heads and such)
When you get something that’s really really close to appearing perfectly human, it doesn’t trigger the “it’s not a real human, give it some leeway” response and instead our brain is temporarily fooled into thinking that it is a real person… until you notice all the little ways that it gets it wrong – stiff facial features, jerky movement, matte skin (real skin is partially translucent) and things that don’t bend the way they should.
This triggers all kinds of revulsion and horror, I’m guessing it’s an evolutionary thing to prevent us wanting to breed with people who are disfigured by birth defects, or have nasty diseases like leprosy… all for the good of the gene pool.
That’s a pretty astute theory and one that to some extent can be tested, not just with regard to humans but animals too…
/start evil scientist mode/
‘phallus’ also creeps me out thanks to overuse by my literature teacher
he’s famous for it
his overuse of the word, that is, not his phallus
ill stop there before i dig myself a hole
sorry, i seem to be very good at commenting on the bits of the blog that are not relevant at all
my literature teacher is kind of like that too
Yeah, I prefer the correct technical term of ‘manbits’.
I can never decide whether I like Freud or not.
On the one hand, he was interesting and had some decent points.
On the other, he was a creepy pervert.
i don’t think i’ll ever forgive him for what he did to fiction.
suddenly every villain has a sympathetic reason for what they’re doing
The only real thing that Freud left us with is a rather detailed schematic about how he thought about himself… Introspection is good, it can make us better… it can make us worse.
I think his drug habit was perhaps his undoing. The fact that cocaine makes people self-centered and arrogant is in no way reflected in his work…
Duane Hanson’s sculpture is unsettling to me.
How odd you should bring those up… I was reading about them recently…
There is something very unsettling about them, though I don’t know whether that is because of their ‘humaness’ or because he has a knack for picking human subjects that represent something unpleasant about our condition.
We don’t like to see what we really look like. That’s why advertisements use unrealistically, often digitally-altered beautiful people. Which, by theory, should creep us out, but doesn’t.
LOL dude the Freud’s desk made me laugh.
Excellent…
The great thing about Freud is his absolute lack of irony.
You missed blow-up-doll in your graph.
I have never thought about the valley concept before, but I can see why it might be so.
I’d write more, but it’s off to work I go.
Well, I should ask Em about this… she used to work in an ‘Adult Store’ that sold that sort of thing…
Apparently there are so many different types, all of different ‘realness’ (including real-feel flesh) that blow-up dolls really cover most points on the graph. Although, I personally can’t think of a good enough reason to have a ‘zombie-blow-up-doll’, that’s a fetish in itself.
I think you have found some thing new for me to fantasise over.
Perhaps more disturbing than the nigh-human inhuman is the occasional individual who sets of the Valley reaction despite being (presumably) completely human.
Worst personal example of this is a customer I had several years ago, a somewhat older woman who when she spoke her teeth did not move- at all. Not clenched and hissing the words out, mind you. More like someone hadn’t bothered to render those particular visuals for speech. It was deeply unsettling.
There are also people out there where social interactions become completely unbearable. Its hard to put a finger on, but something about them just screams ‘wrong’. I’ve noticed this primarily with people who have had traumatic brain injuries, some form of autism, drug burnout or other mental issues.- but, curiously, there’s plenty of people with same that scan as just fine.
If we should ever meet, off the internet, in person, you’ll be able to judge just how cutting that last bit is. I’ve been told that I put people ‘on edge’. Not through anything particularly wrong, just a general mix of fidgeting and facial expressions.
Em thinks that I resemble the lead in the film ‘Lars and The Real Girl‘ (very good film too).
Oddly that film is about a man who needs to have a relationship with a doll in order to sort out some mental trauma.
I think, linking this in with what other people have said, that these traits are all seen as undesirable, at least in terms of mate selection and evolution, and perhaps that’s why we find them kinda creepy…
I was painfully, pathologically shy as a child and I had a lot of odd mannerisms because I wasn’t used to being around other people. But eventually I learned to watch other people that were more sociable and sort of mimic their behavior. Now it just comes naturally, though I can still from time to time “pick up” someone else’s mannerisms (including style of speech and accent) if I’m not careful.
I have this horrible, maybe not-so-irrational fear of animatrons…those robots at Disney that sing and blink and move. I can tolerate them when they’re animals, but the humanesqu ones are terrible.
I am also horribly afraid of zombies.
The uncanny valley sounds like total hell.
Like many valleys…
There’s really nothing wrong with being afraid of zombies, except the domesticated ones, they’re OK.
So happy to see you’ve become aware of the uncanny valley.
You’re not working for the UV tourist agency are you?
“Come and stay in the Uncanny Valley, it’s *almost* great”
Sadly, no. But it does explain why some things are creepy and others aren’t…and to apply a bell curve-ish diagram? Even better.
Animals have a double uncanny valley. We think other humans are attractive, but our closest animal relatives (apes and monkeys) are ugly or funny-looking. Animals somewhat less close to us, like cats and deer and birds, are attractive again… and then, going genetically further and further from humans, you get into slugs and centipedes and worms, and you drop back into another valley. What’s on the other side? Do you ever come out again? (Maybe, because plants are pretty.)
Good observation.
I’ve always thought young orangutans looked like hairy old humans. But cute.
I’ve always had a certain amount of affection for worms and snails, maybe that’s a cultural thing?
I think you’re on to something there – we do find certain animals (normally the small fluffy mammals) very cute, and others less so. This might tie in with something I read once about movie alien design – if they want it to be friendly they mostly mimic a human form but give it a big head or big eyes or an extra arm or something. For the aliens that are supposed to be intimidating they try to mirror our worst traits and take them to an extreme (big, dirty/slimy, warlike) or make it look like an animal we don’t like and don’t resemble (typically insects)
To go back to our animal relations, in increasing order of separation, I think other primates are kinda cute… I like monkeys. Other mammals there’s a lot of “cute” ones there (cats/dogs, pandas etc) even the ones that aren’t hugely cute we tend to at least care about (bears, wolves)
Other vertebrates… some birds are cute, very few fish are cute, you get the occasional cute reptile (same again where we’ll care about the plight of the bigger ones if they’re in trouble even if they aren’t cute) and amphibians… down to personal preference… frogs can be cute, but as a class of animals amphibians tend to be wet and slimy and not all that pleasant.
Invertebrates tend to be weeny little things that we can’t really emphasise or interact with… not so cute. I think size is an important factor here – big mammals are undeniably more liked than tiny insects, plants/trees are back on the human scale so I think that probably causes the second bump in your graph.
movie alien design – if they want it to be friendly they mostly mimic a human form but give it a big head or big eyes or an extra arm or something
That could also apply to cartoon animals, especially the ones that end up in diversified markets and whose likeness you can see on pencil boxes, towels, bumper stickers, and the like.
Ah, now we get interesting!
That’s very true, the double peak… I think Dawkins mentions something about it in Selfish Gene. It’s a form of genetic nepotism (or xenophobia depending upon how you look at it).
Although any pet owner can tell you that it is nearly impossible not to impose human traits on their animals, if your cat was to suddenly start talking there would be an issue…
I haven’t mentioned it, but the Uncanny Valley theory has many, many critics and these issues are used as evidence against it. We don’t tend to see the world in gradations of life, rather as discreet packets of life.
I guess there’s a certain distinction between “beautiful” and “cute”… humans find some animals cute, some beautiful and some neither. Primates, our closest relatives, are “cute” and we might compare an adorable little kid to them, but we’d never use them as a comparison for a beautiful sexy adult, whom we’d be more likely to compare to a gazelle or a lion or something. Strange that we reserve “beauty” for animals that are less like us.
It’s also interesting that we find some insects attractive, like butterflies and ladybugs. Maybe because they remind us of flowers, which are on the other side of the second valley?
And I, personally, like all sorts of animals, including creepy crawlies… but I’ve always been considered weird.
me too, i would kiss my pet worms when i was little
I had an idea for art.
It is graphic, edgy and raw, ideal for this modern world of shock art and voyeristic attitudes.
My idea is this
Skinned, partially skinned or other wise slightly mutilated corpses posed together in position from the Karma Sutra, set in ice or resin cubes, lit with UV or green light.
Music would probably be something like Tartar Lamb.
Thought this would be the ideal thread….
ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew
u.v’s not a good idea, as the artist would probably be spending a lot of time with it, and that’s what causes skin/eye damage.
human corpses would be too hard to obtain legally, so i’d use animals in everyday poses (i.e. running)
and i think the kama sutra’s a bit too far
The artist would have to wear eye protection of some sort and that would automatically provide sufficent protection from the majority of the UV. Due to the toxic nature of dead ppl and resins, rubber gloves, aprons and other protective clothing would be a must, so skin protection would be taken care of.
The skinned human corpses in everyday poses has been done already.
that’s true, if you feel strongly about it go ahead, but it’s not something i’d seek out
There ought to be a SIM called “Uncanny Valley” in Second Life!
You’ll have to excuse my ignorance, I’m not as familiar with SL as I could be (Calan at http://www.gingerdead.com is my go-to expert). What context is the word ‘SIM’ used in?
A SIM in Second Life is another name for a region, or a 256×256 m area of land.
Ahh, I see.
Yes, there should definitely be an Uncanny Valley in second life, especially as somewhere you can visit.
In the UK, the real one, an area of 256m x256m is often referred to as ‘a kingdom’.