As I was viewing the trailers for upcoming film Beowulf, a sudden jolt of repulsion hit me. The graphics and cinematics were great… yes, it looked life-like, but it was too real (and yet, not real). Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins didn’t just look weird. They looked freaky. And I didn’t think “wow!”… I thought “yuck”. Which surprised me just as much, for I thought I should be impressed by the quality of the CGI and rendering.
Today while looking through BBC’s Day in Pictures, I felt it again - look at pic #4… I thought it rather unnerving.
I decided to find out what exactly it is that I’m feeling when I see these things, and I discovered the existence of the Uncanny Valley hypothesis:
Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human ālookā… but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.
This chasmāthe uncanny valley of Doctor Moriās thesisārepresents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness.
Source: Dave Byrant, The Uncanny Valley
More related reads:
A Walk in the Valley of the Uncanny
Monsters of Photorealism
The Undead Zone