why haven’t I seen this video yet?

Here’s the Uncanny Valley, written by Masahiro Mori, and introduced to me by Garnet Hertz, my thesis advisor. The theory’s elements of consideration are human likeness, familiarity, and motion. As shown on the graph above, Mori plots robots according to their human likeness and familiarity. The graph shows that the more human-like a robot is, its familiarity also grows but as it becomes more and more human-like, it plummets, then goes back up drastically. I find it extra interesting that Mori divides the two graphs according to “movement.” I’ve been interested in incorporating the idea of “movement” into my design because I felt like it posseses the element of time, the 4th dimension. I realized that all the negative examples I gave fell into the uncanny valley. So what is it that I want to do? Until now, I thought that the projects I found were eerie only because newer and higher technology just in genereal are tricky to use properly. Am I looking for the opposite side of the uncanny valley?

Today I had a chance to virtually attend The Nowcasting Seminar, organized by Peter Lunenfeld at UCLA Design|Media Arts. The website states that “NOWCASTING is the first conference to apply design theory to emerging issues in the digital humanities. Showcasing digital humanities projects at every level from Google mapping to super computing visualization, the Nowcasting seminar proposes that learning from communication design, interaction design, and industrial design will be vital to 21st century humanistic inquiry.”

I wasn’t fortunate enough to watch all the presentations but caught Erkki Huhtamo’s “SUSHI, ROBOTS, HUMANS, AND THE CULTURE OF INTERACTIVITY,” Warren Sack’s “INTERACTIVE SOCIAL MAPPING,” and Lev Manovich’s “CULTURAL ANALYTICS.”

Although all the presentations had some ties with my thesis direction. Huhtamo’s presentation was the one I could relate the most to. Applying his theory of three modalities of the Human/Machine relationship—mechanization, full automation, interactivity, and their social, cultural, and ideological implications—to the sushi production process, Hutamo was able to illustrate some interesting trends in its industry.

The presentation caught my eyes when he showed videos and images of robots making sushi, touchscreen interfaces being used to order sushi, and the shinkansen(Japanese bullet train)-inspired sushi delivery system. He definitely makes a good point. Japanese culture has historically valued craftsmanship and formality. But all this took a little turn with the modern day Japan’s obsession with robots. Actually….

I guess there has been a history of obsession towards anamorphic objects. This, we could say is parallel to the circling sushi boat delivery but making sushi with robots is different. It replaces the creation process, which hasn’t been done with the tea delivering dolls. So what makes the sushi making machine so “odd?” so un-acceptable?

I think there are a couple of reasons. For one, it is replacing the historical sushi-making, which was often seen as a work of art, craftsmanship, and if earned, perfection—or the hard work behind it. Replacing the image of a skilled “sushi master” with a robot is unaccepted because as human beings, we pride in the fact that we create things unlike other animals. Don’t agree? Well, currently these machines may not be able to consider the different fish sizes, fat content, texture, and all the other details a sushi artisan would. What if this machine became so advanced that it could do all this and maybe make perfect sushi every time it spat one out. What would happen? Would we still honor the sushi master? What if there was a machine that could write the most beautiful poem in the world every time it wrote something? That’s something to think about.

Now there’s another thing to think about. The perfect irregularities of the sushi made by a sushi master and the not-so-perfect uniform sushi from robots. They feel different don’t they? Did I warp Huhtamo’s presentation a little too much towards my thesis?

I’m particularly interested in the black and white cubes because the little parts communicate with each other and shift their form over and over towards a goal. What happens when there are obstacles? or when one part/piece is broken? does it become an “obstacle” as opposed to a “comadre”?

I’m really inspired by the use of magnetic pulls on the edges of the circular prototype. The fluid movement it could potentially make is mindblowing to think about! Metamorphosis is definitely something I am interested in. Too bad I keep on thinking about burning one sensor just to see what would happen. Would the car model have ‘dead specks’ like a ‘dead cell’ on an CRT monitor?