Monday, August 25, 2008

Uncanny

I flew to LA last weekend. This is how I did it:



Take Pills - Panda Bear



***

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:

Aduet feat. Gonjasufi - 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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid to fly, too. Worth it to go to a pretty beach!

jereme said...

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.

Maximum Etc said...

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.

qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq said...

TTB
TTB
TTB


the world is watching.


ttb answers the questions.

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

TTB

Change you can believe in.

Hope you can count on.