The Little Nightmare

This project is done in a group with Cania Antariksa, Tom Breedveld, and Hussein Aldin.

Scared By Innocence

The focus, when confronted with a new type of robot, is often on whether the robot is ‘cute’. As soon as a robot enters the so-called ‘uncanny valley’, it is considered to have failed in a certain regard. What is the point of a robot that no one can stand to be near? The most amazing Artificial Intelligence capable of greatness will not be accepted by the general populace if it is not ‘fun’ or 'cute' to be near.

The notion of ‘uncanny valley’ is distinct from the notion of ‘creepiness’. Where a creepy object is simply something that you do not want to get near to or look at for too long because it feels like it might endanger you in some fashion (or simply ‘creeps you out’), the uncanny valley takes it a step further. It gets triggered when an object or creature (in this case, an artificial creature) looks JUST ABOUT human, but not QUITE.

The Uncanny Valley

Our artificial creature plays with the notion of uncanny valley, and what a robot who was aware of its own undesirability might act like (assuming it had the capacity to make so difficult a cognitive calculation). It might hide, it might try to avoid been seen, it might make sure there is no light source to be seen with in the first place. Being seen might cause it distress, and it undertakes action to make sure it is left alone if spotted. (Keeping in mind it cannot break the laws of Asimov, of course.) Our robot was, to this effect, hidden away in a dark, black box, and registered as averse to light. Being confronted with a light source would make it squirm and cry.

Of course, this reversal of what we will call ‘uncanny distress’ is interesting, but another reversal is necessary for the project to be complete. How do you get people to make the effort to look at a robot that does not want to be looked at? You focus on the element that make the robot almost human - emphasis on human.

With our project, we hope to exemplify the concept of the uncanny valley in two ways:

  1. THE UNCANNY OBJECT DOES NOT WISH TO BE SEEN.

  2. THE VIEWER WISHES TO VIEW THE UNCANNY OBJECT, EVEN IF THEY WOULD OTHERWISE WANT TO GET AWAY FROM IT BECAUSE IT IS CREEPY.

Staring into the abyss, and all that.

Our robot is a baby doll. A broken, creepy baby doll, but a baby nonetheless. It is stuck in a damp, dirty black box that the viewer can peek into, but to properly see the subject, the viewer has to turn on the light via a switch on the outside of the box. This will light the baby, and the robot will start crying and wiggling. Since the doll is broken and badly stitched together, the whole affair gets a rather horrific vibe. But this vibe is only apparent is the viewer is actively trying to see that which does not want to be seen. The viewer has to get close, turn on the light and view the baby to get the desired effect; and the viewer might not want to, once they know what is being seen and how it responds to their watchful eye. Morbid curiosity - the same curiosity that makes one unable to look away from a train wreck - is weaponized. Both the viewer and the robot do not want to be there, but it is the viewer who is unwanted and unable to finish their ordained task to look, and the robot that wants to remove itself from the situation.