Robot Crime Scene
And how does Honda’s reaction to this fall make you feel? One youtube commenter said the reaction made him feel like Asimo had “been murdered.”
Asimo
Asimo continues to be a great example of the uncanny valley, how does watching this video make you feel?
“superhuman” or “fancy puppets”
At the Humanoid Robotics Group at M.I.T., a robot’s “humanoid” qualities can include fallibility and whininess as much as physical traits like head, arms and torso. This is where our cultural images of robots as superhumans run headlong into the reality of motors, actuators and cold computer code. the article…
Data Storage
How much storage do you have on you right now?
Gibson on Non-Mediated Humans
This is something I’ve always noticed with the change from a generation who couldn’t imagine how they would sound recorded or look on film to the current generation who live as though they are on television – the hyper-mediated state of mind.
GaiaCraft
Simon Haiduk created this “interactive permaculture learning module” reflecting the work of GaiaCraft.
Expanding the Uncanny Valley
In 2005, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori issued a brief article, On Uncanny Valley, which proposes an amendment to his original graph of familiarity vs. appearance (human likeness). He adds “something more attractive and amiable than human beings in the further right-hand side of the valley.” I’ve created this figure as a sketch of this expanded [...]
FlashPilgrimage
In response to text messages, hundreds of participants wore white and crossed the Brooklyn bridge, boarded Subways and made their way (many unknowingly) to Coney Island. Joining the event without understanding the purpose and following this crowd, I had the distinct impression that I had been swept up in some religious ceremony. This congregation of [...]
Mapping the Temples of Cyborgism
I’ve been working on completing a paper I began in Jenna Tiitsman’s Cinema and Religion course at Hunter College which explores the numinous potential of replicants in Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner. Cyborgs challenge the praxis that has traditionally divided human and machine (and companion/slave, animal/food, creator/creation, etc.). In doing so, they threaten to disrupt [...]
