[FRIAM] exploiting the uncanny valley...

Fri Jan 22 19:43:10 EST 2021

^^^
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.
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.
The last 4 years is right out of maxheadroom life (in general) has gotten
to where it's all about the ratings and popularity.
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!
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?

On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 10:32 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Good point...  esp  MMORPGs
>
> I'm a big fan of WJW (and erstwhile friend, some 2 decades ago)
> At your reference, I read suarez including Daemon this last year or so...
>
> Ready Player  I and Ready Player II  come to mind.
>
> Steve,
>
> 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, *This is Not a Game* - or my favorite Daniel Suarez *Daemon*
> and *Freedom* (same story over two novels).
>
> davew
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, at 9:46 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>
> 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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