- vr painting
I decided to Instagram message Manards, a fictional designer combining his background in graffiti, classical fine arts, and graphic design in his unique portfolio. I came across his work on Behance and was instantly mesmerised. I couldn’t find a lot of information about his processes and his workflow so decided to message him on instagram. He provided me a lot of useful information and I will continue to use this research to delve into the world of messy interface further. The main link between his work and our brief is that he creates his futuristic three dimensional design from a reconfiguration he creates of famous “grandmaster” paintings in the idea of them centuries ago actually being exposed to computer softwares and programmes. This is a real life example of juxtapositioning analogue and digital works. The original painting therefore being analogue and Manards design being digital. A messy interface.
To the right is a colour palette I have created colour dropping colours from of his pieces and editing them on nomad sculpt.
uncanny valley
The movie The Polar Express is a perfect example of the uncanny valley phenomenon. The computer animated characters (like the one in the background) look eerily realistic, but not quite realistic enough to be real humans.
As voice assistants for Ai development such as Alexa and Siri attempt to simulate humanity by cracking jokes and teasing users, problems arise. Voice assistants that try to mimic human behavior too closely (but fail to do so due to underdeveloped technology) end up entering the realm of the uncanny valley. Their speech seems almost human, but when pushed too far the strange and artificial nature of their behavior unsettles users and generates mistrust by creating cognitive dissonance.
Viewers couldn’t empathize with The Polar Express characters like they could with less realistically rendered cartoon characters, like SpongeBob. The Polar Express had entered the uncanny valley as its characters trod the space between “barely human” and “fully human”.
How can we prevent AI from entering the realm of the uncanny valley? One way is to ensure that voice assistants own up to their technological limitations instead of continuing the charade of agency. For example, instead of responding with “Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What did you say?” when asked a question it doesn’t understand, a chatbot should say something like “Sorry, I’m not very smart! I can only answer simple questions.”
Human-sounding names like Alexa may augment the eeriness of voice assistants as we expect them to act more like us. Conversely, names like Siri or Cortana could lower expectations and reduce the uncanny valley phenomenon and associated cognitive dissonance.
This Is something I felt was an interesting link to liminal spaces which I was exploring within idea 1, and the fusion of the industrial space within the event space. I really enjoyed rendering ' the mill' and I liked the concept of incorporating these into the visuals that would be live to the audience, as a reality warping, uncanny experience as they are experiencing the visuals within the actual space the visuals are about. I will limit the uncanny effect more so as I plan to create visuals like this using three dimensional programmes, and this is something that I am not skilled enough as an animator to create life like renders such as the 'Polar Express' characters. However it plays of this idea
Originally coined by Masahiro Mori in 1970, the term “uncanny valley” describes our strange revulsion toward things that appear nearly human, but not quite right. This revulsion usually involves robots, but can also include computer animations and some medical conditions.
From inside n.0 9 a BBC incredible series.
I thought recreating and experimenting into something similar to this was an interesting exploration into humanity and digital processing to create a feeling of unease and trigger the uncanny valley
 |  |  |  |
|---|
sourced from a website that combines images of people from the internet and combines them using AI to create a person that doesn't actually exist ( below )
I then edited these on photomosh, printed them out and used Tik Toks ' bring life to a photo ' filter to make the print move. Then projected this onto my friends to give the illusion of a new identity on their face.
Tik Tok Filter
liminal space colour palette - bring in the textures of the mill and the idea od unusual use of space
more focus on the human element of the mill space - how human experience is captured in an event space - with industrial 3D metals layering and interplaying with the analogue imagery
Everyone leant towards preferring idea 2. Therefore
I will keep this in mind for further development throughout this project.