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“We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and to the cold machine. A new form of writing will be necessary. I have thought of that and I can feel what is coming. But I rather like it. This swift change of scene, this blending of emotion and experience … in life, too, changes and transitions flash before our eyes, and emotions of the soul are like a hurricane. The cinema has divined the mystery of motion. And that is greatness.”

Leo Tolstoy discussing cinema with Isaak Teneromo in August 1908, as reported in the New York Times on January 31st 1937.

The article also reports that Tolstoy was planning to write “a play for the screen” likely to have “a terrible and bloody theme.”

I really rather wish Tolstoy had written a horror film - and that he could have lived to see Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari. He would have loved it.

(quote via confusionis - my notes)

(via byronic)

theeconomist: As computer graphics and robots get more human, they often seem more surreal. New research (and this image) prove that the famed “uncanny valley” is real indeed. In this review, The Economist discusses recent research attempting to corroborate “the uncanny valley” effect. What is the uncanny valley? Basically, when we look at animations or robots, we are comfortable with their verisimilitude…up to a certain point: the point past which they come to resemble us too much. And we become anxious, creeped out; we experience the vague sensations of creepiness, eeriness, and the uncanny. This “uncanny valley”, which somehow smacks of truth, is not a transparently obvious concept. Why do we shy from images that barely deviate from “natural” humanity, while embracing cartoonish figures whose contours intimate rather than replicate the image we have of homo sapiens? Confused as always by words themselves, I cast a quick etymological glance at “eerie,” “creepy,” and the “uncanny.” “Eerie” comes from the Old English “earg,” for “cowardly.” A fear oozing from our lily-livers. “Creepy” comes from the Old English “creopan,” which described the movement of the body close to the ground. “Uncanny” is the most baffling. In bald terms, it means that which is not canny. And “canny” ultimately derives from the German “können,” to know. In a sense, this English meaning (as opposed to Freud’s German understanding of Das Unheimliche), characterizes our estrangement from knowledge, our sudden recognition of the unknown. All of this suggests that we fear the almost human more than that mostly not human because we fear the judgment such proximity would level at the tawdry predicament of being the primates we are. Just as people fear the class immediately beneath them most of all, there must be something about ourselves, something collective rather than specific, about which we would rather remain in the dark. We are too cowardly to assume or imagine the perspective of the almost human. Too close for comfort indeed.

theeconomist:

As computer graphics and robots get more human, they often seem more surreal. New research (and this image) prove that the famed “uncanny valley” is real indeed.

In this review, The Economist discusses recent research attempting to corroborate “the uncanny valley” effect.

What is the uncanny valley? Basically, when we look at animations or robots, we are comfortable with their verisimilitude…up to a certain point: the point past which they come to resemble us too much. And we become anxious, creeped out; we experience the vague sensations of creepiness, eeriness, and the uncanny.

This “uncanny valley”, which somehow smacks of truth, is not a transparently obvious concept. Why do we shy from images that barely deviate from “natural” humanity, while embracing cartoonish figures whose contours intimate rather than replicate the image we have of homo sapiens?

Confused as always by words themselves, I cast a quick etymological glance at “eerie,” “creepy,” and the “uncanny.”

“Eerie” comes from the Old English “earg,” for “cowardly.” A fear oozing from our lily-livers.

“Creepy” comes from the Old English “creopan,” which described the movement of the body close to the ground.

“Uncanny” is the most baffling. In bald terms, it means that which is not canny. And “canny” ultimately derives from the German “können,” to know. In a sense, this English meaning (as opposed to Freud’s German understanding of Das Unheimliche), characterizes our estrangement from knowledge, our sudden recognition of the unknown.

All of this suggests that we fear the almost human more than that mostly not human because we fear the judgment such proximity would level at the tawdry predicament of being the primates we are. Just as people fear the class immediately beneath them most of all, there must be something about ourselves, something collective rather than specific, about which we would rather remain in the dark. We are too cowardly to assume or imagine the perspective of the almost human. Too close for comfort indeed.