IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Karlsruhe, Germany, May 10, 2013

Art and Robotics:
Freud's Unheimlich and the Uncanny Valley

Full day workshop

Overview



NEWS!


MASAHIRO MORI WILL TALK ON THE UNCANNY VALLEY AT IROS2013

Masahiro Mori, the author of the 1970 article, will speak at a special follow-up session on the uncanny valley topic with a panel discussion at IEEE International Conference on Robots and Intelligent Systems (IROS) in Tokyo on Nov 6, 1:30-3pm.
More details soon...


THE WORKSHOP NOTES AND VIDEO ARE NOW AVAILABLE!

You can find here a detailed summary of each presentation and a Further Reading list related to the workshop (compiled by Dr. Elizabeth Jochum!)

Here's the link to the video of the event, which contains clips of each presentation (filmed by Stelarc!)


RELATED EVENTS

If you wish to point out an event related to the topic of the 'uncanny valley' or 'robotics and art', please send an email to p.salvini@sssup.it




Overview

Artworks involving robots have a rich and extensive history dating back to the ancient Greeks, through da Vinci, Jean Tinguely, Nam June Paik, Survival Research Labs, Jonathon Borofsky, and Stelarc. (see for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_art/).

This full-day workshop at the premier conference for robotics researchers will bring together roboticists and artists and theorists to explore past and future relationships between art and robotics. The workshop will use as a reference point Freud's 1919 aesthetic essay on E.T.A. Hoffman's 1816 horror tale The Sandman (which includes an automaton as a central character): http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf.

Freud's term "Der Unheimliche" is usually translated as "The Uncanny". Freud's concept of the Uncanny is familiar in art history and has been applied to many novels, paintings, sculptures, and films. The term was also applied to a phenomenon noted by Masahiro Mori in 1970 where the human psychological experience of being charmed by animated beings undergoes a steep non-linearity when the animated being is "too close for comfort". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny.

The workshop will be organized to allow ample time for discussion and will include invited and submitted presentations related to Extended Abstracts and Posters. There will also be a presentation session for videos (and ideally live demonstrations/performances!), and roundtable discussions with participants and audience members.

Prior Events
Following the successful workshop held at ICRA 2011 in Shanghai (China) on "Robots and Art", and ICRA 2012 in St. Paul (US) on "Robotics and Performing Arts: Reciprocal Influences", this workshop will extend earlier discussions on art and robotics, focusing on the Uncanny Valley and exploring the ways in which such an intriguing phenomenon has been addressed by artists and roboticists.



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