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Historical, Cultural, and Aesthetic Aspects of the Uncanny Valley

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Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 122))

Abstract

Artificial entities and systems are often designed according to human expectations, simulating human appearance, and behavior to improve social interactions between people and machines. The Uncanny Valley – first described by the roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 – causes an eerie feeling when people observe or interact with an anthropomorphic artificial character. This effect distorts smooth interaction or an emotional connection between humans and artificial figures. Associations between eeriness and human-like appearance or behavior can be seen in literature and art throughout all epochs of mankind’s history. This article focuses on examples from the human past that correlate with the eerie impact of artificial, human-like figures. A review of the history reveals that the Uncanny Valley is connected to aspects that have rarely been discussed: intentions, aesthetics, and cultural context. From the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus, fantasies of Pygmalion, demons of the Dark Ages, horror figures from romanticism up to the androids and zombies of today’s entertainment – human-like appearances as such or those in our imagination trigger both astonishment and discomfort. Therefore, we will see that the Uncanny Valley is jointly responsible for the negative image of artificial characters and continues to prevent a smooth social interaction until today.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the Sumerian version of the poem, Enkidu remains a slave and servant of Gilgamesh.

  2. 2.

    The vessel is usually known as the “Pandora’s box”. The term has come about through a translation error. The Greek word pithos originally referred to a big amphora used for water, wine, oil, or grain.

  3. 3.

    There are few English translations. The most well-known summaries of Lieh Tzu’s stories about automats can be found in “Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought” (Needham and Wang 1956, 53 ff) and “The Book of Lieh-tzǔ” (Giles 1925; Graham 1990). A comprehensive translation of Lieh Tzu texts was derived from the German sinologist Richard Wilhelm. This summary refers to his original German translation from “Das wahre Buch vom quellenden Urgrund” (Lieh-Tzu and Wilhelm 1980, 113 ff).

  4. 4.

    Vaucanson’s Canard Digérateur (Digesting Duck) simulated a metabolism by eating and defecating kernels of grain.

  5. 5.

    E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “The Automata” took von Kempelen’s Chess Turks as a model. Contemporary literary critics say that Hoffmann’s fascination with the Turk does not affect the reader (Gendolla 1992).

  6. 6.

    The science fiction author Isaac Asimov directly addresses this fear of mechanical man in some of his robot novels. His term “Frankenstein complex” also predicts a strong phobia against all resembled human beings – similar to the Uncanny Valley.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the graduate program Digital Media of the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen, and the Stuttgart Media University (HdM) as well as by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for support of the SimTech Cluster of Excellence (EXC 310/1).

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  1. Institute of Visualization and Interactive Systems (VIS), University of Stuttgart/Stuttgart Media University, Stuttgart, Germany

    Valentin Schwind

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    Catrin Misselhorn

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Schwind, V. (2015). Historical, Cultural, and Aesthetic Aspects of the Uncanny Valley. In: Misselhorn, C. (eds) Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15515-9_5

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