Bugging the uncanny valley: Insect Lab is a project to hybridize insects and clockwork. All sorts of bugs get the treatment, including a Hawthorne special.
A question for those interested in the robotic uncanny: do these count? Artificial animals, androids bring the uncanny valley into play, yes, but are insects too strange, too uncomfortable for that effect? Do some life forms (here's the one you'd expect) give us the creeps on their own terms, so much so that we can't feel additionally disturbed?
Put another way: are there animals, or people, for whom the uncanny robot effect doesn't work? A creepy puppy-bot, yes, but perhaps a robot slime mold wouldn't engage us. Perhaps the uncanny valley requires a certain sympathy.
We could launch a contest: nominate the people least likely to disturb us in robotic form!
(via BoingBoing)
People who grew up or live in the city may find insects to be strange. To me, though, it just feels odd that anyone would find them weird or uncanny. Insects are very natural and many of them are actually beneficial. Not even remotely uncanny.
Posted by: Stephen Downes | December 18, 2006 at 20:04
I get creeped out by the way some of them move, but I have yet to see that fluid crawliness duplicated artificially.
Posted by: Ceredwyn Alexander | December 19, 2006 at 13:29