<div dir="ltr">^^^<div>As to uncanny valley WoW (and blizzards cutscenes in general) ge into that. A lot of modern AAA games do. CDProjectreds CP77 is all polygons, but their are some places that come creei-ply close to almost photo realistic.</div><div>WoW's developers were some of the most clever their plague event (for instance) and economics are studies as kind of a good enough approximation to the real world to.</div><div>The last 4 years is right out of maxheadroom life (in general) has gotten to where it's all about the ratings and popularity.</div><div>In gamerspeak we've moved from skill, and substance to gearscore(now bad ass someones armor and weapons are) way to much style over substance-sort of. looks do count to! </div><div>For example in the Whicher (singleplayer game), and the Transformer live actions: look at the transformers and tell me if those are models and clever use of perspective over CGI?</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 10:32 AM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Good point... esp MMORPGs<br>
</p>
<p>I'm a big fan of WJW (and erstwhile friend, some 2 decades ago)<br>
</p>
<div>At your reference, I read suarez
including Daemon this last year or so...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ready Player I and Ready Player II
come to mind.<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="font-family:Arial">Steve,<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">the sloshing space might be in the
world of games that are blurring the boundary between on-line
and physical reality - Pokemon go would be a trivial and
simplistic example. This is an emerging SF trope - see Waltern
Jon Williams, <i>This is Not a Game</i> - or my favorite Daniel
Suarez <i>Daemon</i> and <i>Freedom</i> (same story over two
novels).<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">davew<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div>On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, at 9:46 AM, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" id="gmail-m_4481243226425264681qt">
<p>Jon -<br>
</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reMRbvXfqAo" target="_blank">Max Headroom</a>? 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!".<br>
</p>
<p>I am also reminded (as I often am) of the <a href="https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.75.057201" target="_blank">Inter-reality</a> 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.<br>
</p>
<p>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).<br>
</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rkQn-43ixs&ab_channel=NowThisNews" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Nixon's
moon landing"</a>, neural net <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0&t=385s&ab_channel=TeroKarrasFI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">fever
dreams of photorealistic models that never existed</a>, or
the now all-to-common place notion of an embedded avatar as
in "Snow Crash", "All Tomorrow's Parties", "The Matrix" ...
<br>
</div>
<p>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?).<br>
</p>
<p>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
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0i-Df4w4KY&ab_channel=NewScientist" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">slime
mould driven robot face</a>. Here a non-human puppeteers a
non-human face, the combination of which drives an observer
toward the uncanny valley.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>Here, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZuffHPDAw&ab_channel=NewChinaTV" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">China
has already taken the plunge</a>. 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.<br>
</p>
<p>Lastly, there is the cyborg revolution. I am thinking of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Donna
Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto"</a>, or every time I prepare
a post by googling, looking through my books, or more
generally consulting my extended mind. <br>
</p>
<div>
<hr width="300" align="left">Sent from the <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank">Friam mailing list archive</a> at
Nabble.com.<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<pre>- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriamun/subscribe" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe</a> <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a>
archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<div>- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<br>
</div>
<div>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
</div>
<div>Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>
</div>
<div>un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>
</div>
<div>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</div>
<div>archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
<pre>- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriamun/subscribe" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe</a> <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a>
archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</div>
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<br>
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>
un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>
archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br>
</blockquote></div>