[FRIAM] exploiting the uncanny valley...

[Steve Smith]

Jon -

I appreciate your observation about approaching the UV from either side,
there is definitely an asymmetry, though as with  my earlier references
to "estuarial" it seems like there must be some intermediate territory
where one can wash or slosh back and forth each direction and find some
commutivity?   I suspect *someone* has done some research/investigation
on this in the realm of Max Headroom
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reMRbvXfqAo>?   I didn't bother to
Google but it seems like synchronicity if someone hasn't done a Headroom
workup on Trump, especially with "Network XXIII, a world where nothing
matters but ratings!".

I am also reminded (as I often am) of the Inter-reality
<https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201> work
of Gintautas and Hubler when I see the coupling, for example, of the
slime-mold and the robot face and when I think of the coupling of
individuals in social network contexts like Instagram (followers and
influencers) where the fans influence the influencers as much as
vice-versa, or in odd hysteresis loops.

I think your point about identity and sources of information are very
relevant (and related to what I said last paragraph about who is leading
and who is following or who's influencing the influencers).

- Steve


> From a naive glance, there appears a misleading duality, that of
> approaching the valley from one side or the other. For instance, the
> use of puppets to bring the non-human closer to the human: Jim
> Henson's work, the dancing figures in Kimmel's piece, the neural net
> fake exemplified by "Nixon's moon landing"
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rkQn-43ixs&ab_channel=NowThisNews>,
> neural net fever dreams of photorealistic models that never existed
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0&t=385s&ab_channel=TeroKarrasFI>,
> or the now all-to-common place notion of an embedded avatar as in
> "Snow Crash", "All Tomorrow's Parties", "The Matrix" ...
>
> From the other side come humans moving closer to the non-human or even
> simply a different human: plastic surgeries and botox'd lips,
> Thailand's cross-dressing prostitutes, internet catfishing,
> Victor-Victoria, "Boy's don't cry", butoh dance, (acting in general?).
>
> What seems strange to me is that in any puppet-puppeteer case it is
> not always clear that it is one bringing the other closer to the
> valley. It doesn't even appear to be directly a function of *being
> human* as in the case of this slime mould driven robot face
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0i-Df4w4KY&ab_channel=NewScientist>.
> Here a non-human puppeteers a non-human face, the combination of which
> drives an observer toward the uncanny valley.
>
> Other times, it isn't about misrepresentation but rather identity
> tracing or a transformation of representation. There is the holding
> fixed of Dorothy as she moves from black-and-white to Technicolor, the
> holding fixed of Mary Poppins as she enters an animated-context, or
> the transformation of Milo to "animated Milo" as he passes through the
> phantom tollbooth.
>
> There are also those themes that appear in some religions and sci-fi
> where humans themselves are vessels available to "ride" as puppets:
> Ghost in the Shell, Altered Carbon, or in the case of loa. An
> interesting, though tangential, case is that of stop motion animation.
> Here, it isn't really puppetry nor strictly animation. Like the
> former, there is something of an artifact in the world. Something that
> is there to be manipulated. Like the latter, these manipulations are
> enacted by something outside of time, part of a time outside of time,
> in-between the frames.
>
> Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of such a frontier isn't being
> able to tell the difference between a fake or not, but not caring
> about the sources of information. With deep fakes come a kind of
> modularity, one where *voice* is treated like a backend to be swapped
> out. The *voice of Nixon* is lost among many or any.
>
> Here, China has already taken the plunge
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZuffHPDAw&ab_channel=NewChinaTV>.
> We can all see that these news anchors are AI, and no one questions
> this fact. What becomes questionable, or rather obscured, is whose
> perspective we are presented with. But, this is already the case at
> once whenever scripted news is decoupled from whatever it is to be
> journalism. Again, I cite the *Telecom act* and the disappearance of
> the radio disc jockey.
>
> Lastly, there is the cyborg revolution. I am thinking of Donna
> Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto"
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto>, or every time I
> prepare a post by googling, looking through my books, or more
> generally consulting my extended mind.
>
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