Uncanny
I flew to LA last weekend. This is how I did it:
***
There's this thing called the Uncanny Valley. It's not really a valley, though. It's not really a place. It's a reaction. Or a feeling. Or something.
It's this: when we make simulated people, we get close, and then we get closer, and then we get closer, but we never quite make a completely accurate simulation of a person. And it freaks us the fuck out.
That's the technical slash academic way of referring to how we react. "Freaks us the fuck out."
Like, robots. And computer-animated people. They start to look like us. They get close to looking like us. And the moment they start to look close-but-no-cigar close to us, we start to stop being sympathetic to them. In our positive feelings to things that appear like us, there is a sudden dip. A valley.
The sense we have is called "the uncanny."
While I was in LA, I went up to Santa Monica, to the beach, where I walked in the surf, and went up to the pier. During my walk in the surf, I had a strange emotional reaction. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.
It wasn't a sense of the uncanny. It was kind of the opposite. I felt like I was in a familiar place, but that this familiar place was "correct," whereas the place that put this place in my head as a familiar place was "incorrect." Close-but-no-cigar incorrect.
I stood with my camera, and took a spin, and filmed the beach. And a police vehicle drove by. And I felt like stealing it.
And I figured it out.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a beach location that is, holy hell, an uncanny version of the actual Santa Monica beach. The simulated beach prepared me for the real one, but prepared me in such a way that I had this odd, sympathetic reaction to the real place that included a retroactively "uncanny" experience; all the hours I've spent playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were suddenly loaded with a new sensation.
Is this a "canny" hill?
***
There is a new Happy Cobra Book. It is called Young Revolutionaries. It features Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, and Ellen Kennedy.
(Chelsea and Ellen: yours are on their way. I am finishing up the printing, and sewing them together in my off hours.)
If you want copies, you should get them from the authors. I will be sending almost all of the 50 copies to them.
***
Also, I'm pleased to have discovered this iMeem embedding function. And so, the Mother.Fucking Gaslamp Killer:
***
UPDATE:
Go here to watch Shane Jones read my piece from NO COLONY.
And then BUY NO COLONY, a bad ass journal of new, odd writing.
And then buy Shane's book I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands.
***
There's this thing called the Uncanny Valley. It's not really a valley, though. It's not really a place. It's a reaction. Or a feeling. Or something.
It's this: when we make simulated people, we get close, and then we get closer, and then we get closer, but we never quite make a completely accurate simulation of a person. And it freaks us the fuck out.
That's the technical slash academic way of referring to how we react. "Freaks us the fuck out."
Like, robots. And computer-animated people. They start to look like us. They get close to looking like us. And the moment they start to look close-but-no-cigar close to us, we start to stop being sympathetic to them. In our positive feelings to things that appear like us, there is a sudden dip. A valley.
The sense we have is called "the uncanny."
While I was in LA, I went up to Santa Monica, to the beach, where I walked in the surf, and went up to the pier. During my walk in the surf, I had a strange emotional reaction. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.
It wasn't a sense of the uncanny. It was kind of the opposite. I felt like I was in a familiar place, but that this familiar place was "correct," whereas the place that put this place in my head as a familiar place was "incorrect." Close-but-no-cigar incorrect.
I stood with my camera, and took a spin, and filmed the beach. And a police vehicle drove by. And I felt like stealing it.
And I figured it out.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a beach location that is, holy hell, an uncanny version of the actual Santa Monica beach. The simulated beach prepared me for the real one, but prepared me in such a way that I had this odd, sympathetic reaction to the real place that included a retroactively "uncanny" experience; all the hours I've spent playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were suddenly loaded with a new sensation.
Is this a "canny" hill?
***
There is a new Happy Cobra Book. It is called Young Revolutionaries. It features Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, and Ellen Kennedy.
(Chelsea and Ellen: yours are on their way. I am finishing up the printing, and sewing them together in my off hours.)
If you want copies, you should get them from the authors. I will be sending almost all of the 50 copies to them.
***
Also, I'm pleased to have discovered this iMeem embedding function. And so, the Mother.Fucking Gaslamp Killer:
***
UPDATE:
Go here to watch Shane Jones read my piece from NO COLONY.
And then BUY NO COLONY, a bad ass journal of new, odd writing.
And then buy Shane's book I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands.
posted by The Man Who Couldn't Blog at 11:16 AM
5 Comments:
I'm afraid to fly, too. Worth it to go to a pretty beach!
ativan is good for that type of thing. hospitals use it in higher doses to induce coma
you were right next to where i work. santa monica is nice but it's still los angeles
Canon Beach, OR is where it's at
i will also be buying'giving 3 of Shane Jone's "hairy hands" books on Monday.
hey congrats on winning blake's contest. i hope you like my book.
i got a copy of Young Revolutionaries from Catherine Lacey & it's a real delight. Thanks for making it exist.
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the world is watching.
ttb answers the questions.
TTB
Change you can believe in.
Hope you can count on.
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