The Uncanny Automaton

THE UNCANNY AUTOMATON Valley” continues to be disputed by ro- views and my own evaluation form the Wade Marynowsky, University of botics researcher David Hanson, who basis of the conclusions. Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW, 2751, believes that the hypothesis limits the Autonomous Improvisation v1 [7] is a TRANSACTIONS Australia. E-mail: freedom of artistic exploration. Based on video anthology of some of Sydney’s <[email protected]>. his own research, Hanson has renamed most (in)famous solo musicians and the “Uncanny Valley” the “Path of En- performers. The work captures a range See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/45/5> gagement” (POE) [5]. Encapsulating of performance approaches from bur- for supplemental files associated with this issue. various representational strands of the lesque to sound art, by video recording Submitted: 24 May 2011 uncanny the artist Mike Kelly curated artists in the same studio configuration. Abstract the major exhibition, “The Uncanny”, at The performances were enacted only for A recent body of work exploring the uncanny in the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, in the Unit- the camera and then reconfigured and relation to the automaton has been completed in ed Kingdom [6]. The exhibition demon- presented in the gallery within the work. concurrence with the Doctor of Creative Arts, strates that figurative sculpture may In the work, a prepared Pianola is con- UWS, 2011. This extract of the doctoral paper details the concepts of inquiry, art works produced, embody the feeling of the uncanny trolled by a network of computers, which audience response in the form of critical reviews through their scale and use of colour, are also programmed to orchestrate the and conclusion. form and material. video sequences, creating an As briefly explained, the eighteenth- everchanging composition. This is pre- Critical analysis of the uncanny has pro- century notion of the uncanny has con- sented via three channels of audiovisual vided a wealth of theoretical literature tinued to be a rich conceptual framework projection. from a broad range of contemporary for research. By creating artworks that Through indeterminate recomposition, researchers, artists, scientists and psy- explore the notions of the uncanny au- the work questions whether it is possible choanalysts alike. Cultural theorist Terry tomaton within a contemporary context, for improvisation to be programmed, or if Castle has stated “the eighteenth century this research connects the history of the this is simply a paradoxical endeavour? invention of the automaton was also (in uncanny to the contemporary art gallery Significantly, Autonomous Improvisation the most obvious sense) an invention of in search of new uncanny moments. v1 asks us to consider what is uncanny the uncanny” [1]. In 1906, psychoanalyst The research questions ask: Can au- about autonomous systems and the pat- Ernst Jentsch stated that a very good tonomous artworks help us to understand terns that arise from these systems. instance of the uncanny casts “doubts [as the nature of the uncanny? What is the While the unexpected combinations of to] whether an apparently animate being nature of the contemporary response to performance styles may have been ar- is really alive; or conversely, whether a autonomous artworks? Is the “Uncanny resting in some circumstances, the work lifeless object might not be in fact ani- Valley” a limiting construct? did not address all of the aspects of the mate” [2] [for example] “the impressions I have addressed hese questions uncanny that I sought to achieve. There made by waxwork figures, ingeniously through the production of three major was no question of whether the work constructed dolls and automata” [3]. works for solo exhibition. Each major was alive or not, it was in essence mere- In the 1970’s, robotics scientist Pro- work combines technological media, ly an autonomous system that alluded to fessor Masahiro Mori developed the robotic elements and networks of com- the uncanny within the long history of “Uncanny Valley” hypothesis. The hy- puters. The works seek to address the automata. In alluding to the uncanny in pothesis warned artists not to design research questions in an attempt to this work I am addressing ‘the uncanny robots as too human-like, otherwise the achieve the uncanny by using it as an aesthetic’ as described by Michael robot would repel the human viewer and aesthetic framework. Critical reviewers Arnzen [8]. Jeff Khan has located this thus fall into the uncanny valley, a state have written on their experiences and the aesthetic genre within the history of of fear and disbelief [4]. The “Uncanny qualities of the work. These critical re- ‘nineteenth-century gothic horror’ [9]. Fig. 1. The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie Robot, 2008, The Institute of Contempo- Khan here has understood my reference rary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N), Sydney. (© Wade Marynowsky. Photo: Craig Bender.) to the uncanny and its relation to the automaton. Sean Lowry takes things further in the review ‘Alien Jukebox’ [10], “Just as cinema once provided a new and strange way of experiencing life, the computer is now seemingly and endlessly extending our experience of the uncanny”. Importantly, Lowry raises questions about whether or not improvisation can be programmed. He suggests that because of the programmatic limitations embedded in the system, its struc- tured limitations do not allow any real autonomy. I agree that the automation within this work was limited both in terms of the sequencing of material and in that it is anchored to a fixed position. Therefore, in subsequent works, I pro- posed to explore untethered physical movement within space. I also propose to introduce aspects of artificial intelli- 482 Leonardo, Vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 482–483, 2012 © 2012 ISAST Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00452 by guest on 03 October 2021 gence in order to address the idea of autonomous beings acting on their own accord. The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoi- TRANSACTIONS sie Robot (Fig.1.) [11] (After Luis Buñ- uel). The Bourgeois Robot (Boris) is operated by myself, over the internet, for the duration of the exhibition. The charming, life sized robot avatar waits for visitors to enter the space and then converses with them in a polite and pleasant manner. The robot wears a hooped dress, which recalls the begin- nings of automata, in the eighteenth century; for example, Jacques de Vaucanson’s mechanical flute player and defecating duck (1738). Vaucanson’s automata stunned European eyes of the era, producing the first uncanny moments in robotic art. The fact that the Boris’s voice is male and that he wears a Fig. 2. The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons, 2010, Beyond Mediations, dress highlights the camp sensibility of Mediations Biennale, The 2nd International biennale of contemporary art, Poland. robots. As Steve Dixon states in his es- (© Wade Marynowsky) say “Metal Performance”, “Robotic ball for robots; it also comments on the 3. Freud, S & Strachey J 1985, Art and literature: Jensen’s Gravida, Leonardo da Vinci and others movement mimics and exaggerates but sleight of hand attempts of the basic works, Penguin, Harmondsworth. never achieves the human, just as camp artificial intelligence at play. The piece 4. Mori, M 1970, ‘The uncanny valley’, Energy, movement mimics and exaggerates but is partly inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 33–35. never achieves womanhood” [12]. The Sandman (1817) [16], in which a 5. Hanson, D, Ismar, AO, Pereira, A, Zielke, M After the exhibition I became aware of young man falls in love with a feminine 2005, Upending the uncanny valley, University of Texas at Dallas and the Institute for Interactive Arts similar works of trickery in the history of automaton, Olympia, who dances with and Engineering, Dallas, p. 25. artificial intelligence. As Dan McKinlay him at a ball. In this work I sought to test 6. Kelley, M, Welchman, JC & Grunenberg, C noted in his review [13], “the conversa- if an unnerving effect could still be 2004, The uncanny : by Mike Kelley, artist ; [on the occasion of the Exhibition The Uncanny; Museum tion invokes and inverts that old new- reached if the robots were designed as Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 15 July - media parody, the ELIZA [14] psychoa- abstracted human-like forms (opposed to 31 October 2004]. nalysis program”. Through the sugges- human like forms advised in the “Un- 7. Marynowsky, W 2007, Autonomous Improvisa- tion of intelligence, Boris created a canny Valley”). Through the use of scale tion v.1, see <www.marynowsky.net/Auton.html>. scenario in which I could perform the (of the five 2.4m tall robots), automated 8. Arnzen, M 2008, Autonomous improv and the player piano effect: the popular uncanny. Viewed uncanny. This caused uncertainty lighting, including moments of darkness 07,<www.gorelets.com/uncanny/artmusic/autonom amongst some audience members. There and an eerie soundscape I enhanced the ous-improv-and-the player-piano-effect>. was not uncertainty as to whether the slightly menacing atmosphere. From the 9. Khan, J 2009, Primavera 09: exhbition of young robot was alive or not, but how intelli- collected audience responses I can attest Australian artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. gent it was and how it could be so intel- to the creation of contemporary uncanny 10. Lowry, S 2008, ‘Alien jukebox: Wade ligent. The interaction in the work moments from autonomous artworks. I Marynowsky’s Autonomous Improvisation v1’, became a game of interrogation between would agree with Hanson’s (POE) in that Column 1, Artspace Publications, Sydney, p.113. robot and human. Another sense of the the “Uncanny Valley” limits artistic 11. Marynowsky, W 2008, The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie Robot, Electrical engineering; Aras uncanny effect was achieved by the in- freedom and should be utilized as an Vaichas, Software design; Mr.Snow, Dress maker; troduction of evocative movement in aesthetic framework for the exploration Susan Marynowsky.

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