norayoung.ca | At the Corner of Technology and Culture
The Waning of the Uncanny Valley
I’ll freely admit to having a bit of an obsession with the not-quite-human. I’m fascinated by celebrity cosmetic surgery, for instance, with the way it turns beautiful, ageing people into glossy, puffy, simulacra. And then, of course, there are the robots. It’s in equal measures fascinating and creepy to look at humanoid robots, parsing what [...]
File Under Weird Art
Lately, I’ve been thinking about cyborg chic. If we are inching towards a cyborg reality in medical innovations, perhaps we are also moving towards an aesthetic of obvious human/machine crossover. For instance, consider the cell phone ads featuring hands made up of cell phones, or the hot rising star, the deliberately cyborg-esque singer Janelle Monae. [...]
