Uncanny Valley and Hyper-realism

An art exhibition called 'Lifelike' showcased a lot of uncanny art work internationally and from many different cultures. It shows paintings and works of art that are so frightening hyper-realistic that it gives off the sense of 'not right' and this is something we have tried to recreate in our film.

Hyper realism stems also into digital art, not just the tangible. For example, CGI has now become so hyper-realistic (such as 'Ed' by Chris Jones) that it is almost impossible to tell that it is no longer a real person. Which then makes us perceive it as a possible threat, as human likeness is no where near being the same as human, which causes something to be unpredictable.

This all stems from Jean Baudrillard, who I have also done some work on in the past at college. He called hyper-realism 'the simulation of something which never really existed.'[1] and therefore this is a new type of reality as the things never existed in ours- which makes us very wary. This then means that when it does cross into ours, we are instantly hostile the moment that we notice that this uncanny thing is among us.

Another man who explored the feeling of uncanny in relation to hyper-realism is Masahiro Mori, who was a roboticist who studied the feeling of uncanny people got when they recognised that something so lifelike was not human. He published this in the form of a hypothesis called 'the Uncanny Valley' [2] and even proposed a graph (this is a graph derived from the original content by Masahiro);

 

This is a very visual way of seeing how we perceive human likeness with 'the uncanny' which also effects the way that you would intentionally create this feeling in a film like we have tried to. By having something so human like, it is almost a betrayal to the water to then have it revealed as something so inhuman, despite the way others react around it.

 

Robots come heavily under the umbrella of the uncanny valley and that is easily seen by the amount of robot films that are made where they are humanoid and 'attempt to take over the world' or have similar desires. This uncanny distrust of humanoid beings stems back to the likeness they have with us yet being completely and inherently different right down to the core.

 

Hyper-realism ties into this, as the more realistic things become than the more we perceive them as a threat. For example from the graph above, we know industrial robots are just that- robots and therefore with their limited human likeness they do not fall into the uncanny valley. But the more human like you make something the more they can 'pass' as human, and when it is revealed they are not it is a hostile shock.

 

1. Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation", Ann Arbor Mich. University of Michigan Press, 1981
2. Kawaguchi, Judit (10 March 2011). "Robocon founder Dr. Masahiro Mori". Words To Live By. Japan Times. p. 11. Archived from the original on 13/03/2013. Retrieved 02/12/2014.